New Dental Department Opened At Hospital

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32011, 11 June 1969, Page 16

New Dental Department Opened At Hospital

The most unnerving wait-ing-room in Christchurch yesterday must have been that in the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s new dental department in St Asaph Street. Dentists moved in before the job was quite finished, and patients heard the shriek of power-saws as well as the whine of the dentists’ drills. But apart from that, patients attending the new rooms have been provided with much better facilities than they had in the old department in the Christchurch Hospital. There are special rooms for separate aspects of the department’s work, a spacious and comfortable main wait-ing-room, and two wellfurnished recovery rooms where patients lie down for a while after a gruelling session. I The department’s seven

dentists and 14 nurses, mech-, anics and technicians have the use of two staff rooms and a shower room and other toilet facilities. The new building has a five-chair surgery where fillings are done, a prosthetic surgery for the fitting of dentures, an orthodontic surgery for the straightening of teeth, two surgeries for extractions, an X-ray surgery and a large workroom where dentures, orthodontic plates and splints are made. Mr A. Russell, the senior dental surgeon in charge of the department, said yesterday that most of the department’s patients were referred there by private dentists. They were mainly persons who were unable to meet private fees for special work. The department also treated inpatients at the board’s hospitals and other institutions.