Practice made perfect

I have worked in general practice for 31 years. For the last 22 years I have had my own practice in Andover, Hampshire. It is principally a private practice with a very small commitment to the NHS (essentially child patients that I had before the new contract was introduced). For the last four years we have also been a vocational training practice, with newly qualified dentists spending a year with me, completing their training in general practice. Our foundation dentist works mainly in the NHS, however this is the last year that I plan to undertake training. One of our previous foundation dentists, Amelia Thorne, is already working as a private associate and she will be increasing her time at the practice when I finish vocational training. 

It is only in the last 18 months we installed a computerised practice management system. Prior to this the practice was completely paper based. The decision to computerise was decided for several reasons. I was aware it was increasingly important to keep thorough, comprehensive and legible records, several of our nurses had previous positive experience of computerised practice management and I wanted to eventually incorporate digital imaging into our practice.