Emergency Dental Care
Published November 2007
Extant 2013, archived 2026 (see Review and updating for details)
Downloads
- Emergency Dental Care (PDF) – archive for reference only, not to be used to inform clinical practice
- Dental Practice Guide (PDF) – reviewed and updated September 2026 (the PDF and an accessible version are also available via the SDCEP Management of Acute Dental Problems website)
These publications are only available to download and are no longer available in print.
About this guidance
The 2007 Emergency Dental Care guidance aimed to facilitate a systematic approach to the provision of care for patients with a dental emergency that could be applied to suit local circumstances. It provided quality standards that specified the requirements of out-of-hours emergency dental services for use by NHS Boards and dentists. The guidance was intended to complement the national work on emergency dental service development involving NHS Boards and NHS 24.
The guidance focused on the patient journey to providers of care and included specific self care advice to support dental staff in advising patients and a simple method for prioritising dental emergencies in primary care practice, which were also presented in a brief Practice Guide.
Guidance development
Emergency Dental Care was developed by a small group of professionals with particular interest and experience in the topic, and was subject to widespread consultation and peer review before finalisation of the content for publication. Further information about the SDCEP guidance development process is available.
Review and updating
In 2013, the SDCEP Steering Group agreed that the Emergency Dental Care (EDC) guidance should remain extant without revision. In reaching this decision, the following points were noted:
- Considerable progress had been made in the development of services for unscheduled dental care throughout Scotland.
- As some dental practices had not opted into local Emergency Dental Service arrangements, the Out-of-hours Emergency Dental Standards included in this guidance remained relevant to them.
In 2018, the SDCEP Steering Group agreed not to prioritise further review and updating of the EDC guidance but to continue to make it available for reference.
In 2026, SDCEP published the second edition of the Management of Acute Dental Problems (MADP) guidance. The SDCEP Steering Group agreed that the clinical aspects of the EDC guidance that support dental staff in advising patients and prioritising dental emergencies in primary care practice should be updated to reflect the advice provided in the current MADP guidance. Therefore, a second edition of the brief EDC Practice Guide was developed. The updated Practice Guide was reviewed by members of the Guidance Development Group for the MADP guidance and dental team members with experience of dental triage.
The full version of the EDC guidance provided quality standards that specified the requirements of out-of-hours emergency dental services. As services have developed further since publication it was agreed that the full version of the EDC guidance would not be updated but would be retained as an archived historic strategy document, for reference if required.
