NHS England & NHS Improvement, London, United Kingdom.
NHS England & NHS Improvement, London, United Kingdom.
Health Policy. 2023 May;131:104760. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104760. Epub 2023 Mar 16.
COVID-19 presents a unique and significant challenge to healthcare systems across the globe. Dental workforce redeployment, in England, during the response to Coronavirus (COVID-19), is the first reported national effort to redeploy a professional body into new clinical environments. The policy decision to facilitate redeployment of the dental workforce, in March 2020, by the Office of the Chief Dental Officer (OCDO), increased flexibility within workforce systems and allowed increasing demand on healthcare services to be managed safely and effectively. This paper outlines how this policy change was achieved via a multi-professional approach, mapping competencies of the dental workforce to high-priority areas of healthcare need. The dental workforce has a varied and often specialised skill set, offering expertise in infection prevention and control, airway management and often, behaviour management. These skills can be an important contribution to tackling a pandemic where expertise in these areas is vital. This increase in workforce supply allows healthcare systems to improve their surge response capabilities. Additionally, redeployment presents an opportunity to create greater and sustained collaboration between the medical and dental professions, leading to greater understanding of the contribution of oral health to wider medical wellbeing.
新冠疫情给全球各地的医疗系统带来了独特而重大的挑战。在应对冠状病毒（COVID-19）期间，英格兰牙科工作人员的重新部署是首次报道的将专业人员重新部署到新临床环境的全国性努力。首席牙科官员办公室（OCDO）于 2020 年 3 月做出的促进牙科工作人员重新部署的政策决定增加了劳动力系统的灵活性，并允许安全有效地管理对医疗保健服务的日益增长的需求。本文概述了如何通过多专业方法实现这一政策转变，即将牙科劳动力的能力与高优先级的医疗需求领域相匹配。牙科劳动力具有多样化且通常专业的技能组合，在感染预防和控制、气道管理以及行为管理方面具有专业知识。这些技能对于应对需要这些领域专业知识的大流行可能会有重要贡献。劳动力供应的增加使医疗系统能够提高其应急响应能力。此外，重新部署为医疗和牙科专业之间创造了更大和更持续的合作机会，从而更深入地了解口腔健康对更广泛的身体健康的贡献。
