Virtual consultations for emergency triage and advice

If a patient’s concern cannot easily be dealt with by phone advice, it is strongly advised that the patient should send a video or photos of their teeth demonstrating the problem. Most emergency clinics will not see a patient until this process has been completed and all attempts at completing remedial action at home have been explored.

Above is the video for patients to show them how to take a video/photo using a clean technique and producing a sufficiently good image for it to be helpful.

This video/photo can then be sent to the orthodontist to aid discussions about emergency treatment.

If you are concerned about GDPR then you should use the Hospify app – to which you can invite your patient to upload photos. This is a free secure app for information to be transferred but it will only upload photos, not videos. It is approved by the NHS and is suitable for transferring patient information between clinicians and patients.

If the patients wish to send videos via Whatsapp, or email you should let them know that the links are not secure. However, as the images will be of teeth, this is not identifiable information.