The children’s dental emergency in Motola ends: Where to seek help?
Together with the new year, the children’s dental emergency at FN Motol ends, the hospital justifies the decision by the fact that the demanding and thankless work was performed only by externs, who refuse to work on them since the beginning of the new year. In Motola, care will continue to be provided only for urgent cases, such as injuries, bleeding, acute severe toothaches that cannot be relieved even by medication, etc.
The overloading of the children’s dental emergency occurred mainly because of the too high number of patients seeking its services. “The Dental Clinic of Motol University Hospital is a unique workplace, which is mainly used for the treatment of severe injuries, traumas, congenital developmental defects, etc. The children’s dental emergency at FN Motol was increasingly abused by cases that do not belong in the emergency at all“, Pavlína Danková, spokeswoman for the FN Motol, told Bleska. As examples of such cases, he cites common pain that does not require analgesics, chronic pain, loose temporary teeth before tooth replacement, loose or fallen fillings, caries, etc.
The above-mentioned examples put a burden on the clinic, and in order to reach everyone, the employees of FN Motol would have to cut themselves up. “Due to the overload of the medical staff of the Children’s and Adult Stomatological Clinic of the 2nd Faculty of Medicine of the UK and the Motol General Hospital really it is not in our power to replace the dental care of general dentists, even during emergency service,” said Danková.
Criticism of the mayor
The situation with children’s dental emergencies in Prague is also addressed by Mayor Zdeněk Hřib, who in his statement to Blesk criticized the management of the Motol hospital: “For the year 2022 alone, the amount of 39 million crowns was set aside from the city budget for medical emergency services in state-owned hospitals . It really surprises me then that the management of one of the largest hospitals in the Central High School (FN Motol), in the city with the largest number of dentists per population, is unable to provide this basic public service when other large and smaller providers in Prague can provide it.”
At the same time, Mayor Hřib does not expect any deterioration in dental care for child patients in Prague, and according to him, the Municipal Polyclinic in Spálená Street and the Faculty Thomayer Hospital have no problem with providing these services. “What is also surprising about the whole matter is that even in July FN Motol was interested in running a dental emergency, it submitted a subsidy application to the municipality, it was processed and the subsidy was allocated to themhowever, despite all this, before the end of last year, the municipality received information about the unilateral cancellation of the dental emergency by FN Motol,” Hřib told Blesku.
Will the children be taken care of?
Councilor Milena Johnová, whose health care falls under her competence, answered Blesk’s question that they had already reached a joint agreement with the management of the Municipal Polyclinic in Spálená: “I have agreed with the management of the Municipal Polyclinic that they will also start treating children’s patients. Mr. Director, at the request of dentistry, that children who come to the emergency room should be given priority and that they should have enough time. Furthermore, the polyclinic will prepare separate workplaces for children and will do everything to ensure children’s dentists. The Department of Health has already started taking steps in this regard so that we can find children’s dentistry.”
In his statement, he also added that today’s situation is mainly due to long-term poor regulation at the national level, as a result of which, according to John, there are two fundamental problems: “Half of the patients who come to the dental emergency in Spálená Street are people from other regions, most from Central Bohemia and Ústí Region. She handled half the number of patients at the polyclinic in Spálená playfully, even with children.”
As a second problem, he mentions, like FN Motol, the influx of patients who, with painful teeth, should seek help elsewhere than at the emergency room: “People go to the emergency room in Spálená repeatedly for treatment – the entire treatment is for patients who received the first acute treatment in Spálená, but did not go to their attending dentist for follow-up care. The question arises why? Hours of waiting at the emergency room are certainly not the right motivation,” says Johnová.
The dental clinic for children’s patients will continue to operate in emergency mode at the Motol General Hospital and will still be able to take care of acute cases, while in 2022 it served an average of 600 patients per month. Both Johnová and Hřib agree that the problem needs to be solved at a higher level than just in Prague. In a statement to Blesk, Hřib also stated that he will initiate negotiations on this topic together with the Governor of the Central Bohemian Region and the Ministry of Health.
![A second press conference took place on the Pirate Ship, where people evaluated the success so far A second press conference took place on the Pirate Ship, where the people's parties evaluated the success so far](https://1884403144.rsc.cdn77.org/foto/lod-hotel-stab-pirati-volby-komunalni-ivan-bartos-zdenek-hrib/NjIweDMyOC9jZW50ZXIvdG9wL3NtYXJ0L2ZpbHRlcnM6cXVhbGl0eSg4NSkvaW1n/7934514.jpg?v=0&st=X0AAvUcZk8nHxnH_KnJF7tg3p9b_ABMJoiU-2RNdmZ4&ts=1600812000&e=0)
A second press conference took place on the Pirate Ship, where the people’s parties evaluated the success so far
Author: Lightning: Martin Přibyl