Is routine hygiene appointments covered under the NHS?

I'm a UK dentist. The short answer basically is no. The long answer with nuance is *it depends*. Times have changed significantly especially after COVID and the mass exodus of dental professionals from NHS and difficulty recruiting, especially in rural areas. In order to keep up with increasing demand on a depleting workforce it is almost always impossible to provide a scale that older patients would have been used to at the same time as their examination; it is too time consuming and the instruments cannot be turned around quickly enough to meet the often extensive day-lists. Personally I would consider a band 1 Scale as any debris I can remove with a hand-scaler within your designated appointment. If I'm unable to do that then it's not simple and requires more time to do a good job. Additionally the term *scale and polish* is outdated in general dental lexicon and is now a hygiene term. Dentists would do *professional mechanical plaque removal* which at the end of the day really is just semantics but it helps to differentiate the focus of the treatment away from *polishing* which dentists definitely will not do. Finally the profession has employed more of a skill mix approach to cope with the aforementioned demands so treatments are compartmentalised to specific "subspecialties" like hygienists or therapists for example to ease the burden of work on dentists. Personally I think NHS needs to update its scope and terminology, as well as do more to educate the general public on what NHS dentistry actually is for. Even newly qualified dentists aren't fully clued up on it.