Students to help children with dental fears

Dental students are being taught some simple techniques to allay the fears of their young patients.

This comes in the light of the news that a Cornish girl starved herself to death, severely traumatised by a trip to the dentist.

Eight-year-old Sophie Waller, from Cornwall, developed pervasive refusal syndrome – a severe oral phobia – after a series of traumatic dental visits. But Britain's newest dental school could make all the difference for children who fear dentists.

The Peninsula Dental School, based in Plymouth, opened its doors in 2006 to the UK's first group of students who are learning as much by theory as practice.

The school's dean, Professor Liz Kay, said: ‘Dental skills have in the past just been read as the technical, doing skills. ‘At the Peninsula Dental School there is absolute equality between technical skills and communication, psychology and sociological skills.

‘We try to understand what the root causes of that person's anxieties are, in a “we are in this together” role, rather than the treated and the being treated.'

Professor Kay has written advice for students about how to ease children's fears.

‘You have to remember what it's like to be five and speak in a language the children understand,' she said.

‘Words like “dental chair” could be replaced by more child-friendly words like “rocket man's chair.Insead of saying “open your mouth” you say “let's count your teeth”.

She said dentists also had to fight a perception that a trip to them meant a painful experience.

She added dentists could make surgeries friendlier places by putting out games and keeping appointment times and said parents could help by simply making sure their children cleaned their teeth and avoided sugary food.