Are you confident in spotting a child at risk of neglect?
Do you know what to do if you witness abuse in your practice?
How can you raise concerns safely while protecting both the child and your team?
This episode with Dr. Christine Park provides tangible actions, practical scripts, and clear guidance for managing challenging scenarios—like seeing an adult hit a child in the waiting room or recognizing neglect in the dental chair. These are situations dental school rarely prepares us for.
Every practice needs clear protocols for safeguarding. This episode acts as a North Star, helping you stay compliant while ethically doing the right thing. If you treat children, you must listen to this episode and share it with every colleague who treats children.
https://youtu.be/-kYs23Xa4LsWatch PDP251 on YouTubeProtrusive Dental Pearl: Find the phone number of your local child safeguarding board / social services. Verify it, then display it where you and your team can quickly access it.
Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!
Key Takeaways
Highlights of this episode:
00:00 Teaser
00:59 Intro
02:40 Pearl – Child Protection Hotline
05:23 Dr. Christine Park’s Background and Expertise
08:37 The Role of Dentists in Safeguarding Children
11:19 Practical Scenarios and Guidelines for Safeguarding
15:35 Recognizing Silent Cases of Neglect
17:29 Team Collaboration and Support in Safeguarding
21:58 Guidelines and Policies for Effective Safeguarding
22:03 Midroll
25:24 Guidelines and Policies for Effective Safeguarding
28:32 Handling a Tough Safeguarding Scenario
32:18 Dealing with Poor Oral Hygiene and Neglect
39:12 Managing Parental Reactions and Consent
43:08 The Importance of Safeguarding in Dentistry
45:34 Further Guidance and Resources
46:10 Outro
???? Safeguard your young patients with confidence!
Catch Dr. Christine Park at the Scottish Dental Show in June or via her NES webinars.
Check out the BSPD guidelines on dental neglect —an essential resource for any dentist treating children
✉️ Get in Touch with Dr. Christine:
If you loved this episode, don’t miss How to Manage Children in Dental Pain – Paediatric Emergencies – PDP159
This episode is eligible for 0.75 CE credit via the quiz on Protrusive Guidance.
This episode meets GDC Outcomes A and D.
AGD Subject Code: 430 PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY (Identification and reporting of child abuse)
Aim: To equip dental professionals with practical knowledge and skills to recognize, respond to, and appropriately escalate safeguarding concerns involving children in dental practice.
Dentists will be able to –
Click below for full episode transcript:Teaser: We're so well trained in observing, and we're really, really good at knowing what normal is. We know what looks normal to us, and even if we are not consciously aware of what we're seeing, there is always an unconscious part of us. If we see something that doesn't feel right, it will feel uncomfortable.
Teaser:The worst thing is if a dentist or a nurse gets left to deal with it on their own at half past four on a Friday afternoon, when they can’t get through to anybody, and all the rest of the practice are going, not my problem, I’ll see you later.
What do I want that child to think about in years to come? When they’re grown up and they’re an adult and they can look back, do I want ’em to look back and say, that dentist Christine, she saw me and knew I needed help and did X, Y, Z, or, that dentist saw me and knew I needed help and did nothing.
And never want any of my dental colleagues to be the last health professional to see a child that something then horrific happens to.
Jaz’s Introduction: If you treat children, it is your duty to listen to this episode in full, because this is one of those times you get to change a child’s life. You get to potentially save a life, or at the very least, change the entire trajectory of a child’s life.
Safeguarding of children is one of the recommended topics from our regulator, and there’s a really good reason for that. We, as dentists, are in a phenomenal position to be able to look out for nuances and really safeguard the children. They only see their medical doctor when there’s a problem, but they see us more regularly.
And if you treat children, it should be part of your personal development plan to safeguard them. And this episode will give you CPD for that. But forget the CPD, because more importantly, when you see an adult hitting a child in the waiting room, or you see a neglected child in your dental chair and you need to raise concerns, this episode will give you tangible actions, scripts to follow, and good, safe guidance on how to manage these really tricky scenarios, which dental school just does not prepare us for.
This episode with Dr. Christine Park will give you the tools you need to manage these tough scenarios. Now, it’s not a very common thing, thankfully. It’s a bit like mouth cancer. We do screening for mouth cancer every single patient, and we hope not to find it, but when we do find it or are concerned, we refer, we get some expert advice, and we should be doing the same when it comes to safeguarding children.
Every practice needs to have clear protocols in place, and this episode is a great North Star to follow, to help us stay compliant, but also ethically do the right thing. So if you treat children, you must, must, must listen to this episode and share it with every colleague that treats children.
Dental PearlHello, Protruserati. I’m Jaz Gulati, and welcome back to your favorite dental podcast. Every PDP episode I give you a Protrusive Dental Pearl. It’s a very important actionable step I’m giving you for this episode’s pearl. Now, most of us under our computer or near our workstation, we have the phone number to call if the service stops working.
Or if we need IT support, and this is almost like universal for all dental practices I’ve worked in. Now, what all practices don’t have is a phone number for when you are concerned about the wellbeing of a child, when you need to do some safeguarding for children, the phone number of social services near you, or a safeguarding authority for children near you.
Do you have that phone number easy to find somewhere? And I think it’s our duty to have that number easy to reference. It’s a bit like when a dental trauma comes in, we refer to the guidelines, we follow the steps. Well, sometimes with these high-octane, adrenaline-pumping, tough conversations that we have with parents, we need a quick reference of a phone number to call for help, as well as discussing it with the lead nurse, practice manager, the other dentist.
Because when safeguarding and children is concerned, it is an entire practice issue, and it is a community-wide issue. So my top tip is have the phone number. Have a phone number of your local safeguarding authority, and you have to do a bit of work. I would say ask ChatGPT, then verify that what ChatGPT is telling you is correct. You need a local contact to get advice. And I think it’s our ethical duty to do so.
Anyway, let’s check out the main episode with Dr. Christine Park, who really breaks it down. Well, we have scripts. We have tangible actions for you to better look after children. I really hope you never have to use these scripts, but when you do, you’ll be way more prepared and you’ll be able to really help children and change their entire life. Enjoy the learning. I’ll catch you in outro.
Main Episode:Dr. Christine Park, welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. So nice to have you smiling. You’ve got the a nice...