Sir, in these days of 'doom and gloom' in dentistry, I wanted to share with you something that really made me smile and appreciate what wonderful caring dental nurses can do to really enhance the patient experience. Working in Barts Health Community Dental Service, in the inner London area of Tower Hamlets, we see a lot of patients who often have very long beards. One of my patients is an elderly, very medically compromised, wheelchair-bound gentleman who needed some new dentures as the hospital had lost his. When I entered the surgery the nurse had already helped him transfer to the dental chair and the patient was facing me. This is what I saw (Figs 1-3).

Figure 1
figure 1

Ingenious beard protection for patient

Full size image

Was it a new type of religious covering, which I was unaware of? No - it's a novel beard protector! And it worked.

It was made from two gauze dental napkins and micropore. Value for money at 1.3 pence per square and with a very happy carer who said last time it took her ages to get the impression material out of the beard. We were all grateful to the wonderful dental nurse, Abdul Hye.