It has, as you can see, been many months since I last even glanced at my own blog. Much rubbish has gone under my own professional bridge in that time, most of it very expensive and involving two subjects; the Care Quality Commission, and HTM01-05.

I`ll tell you later about those. If you have the time.

But yesterday we did have a very good session of training from the Dental Buying Group (DBG), on Fire Safety. Useful in that I`d really rather not die in a fire, or have my staff patients and business go up in smoke either.

We`re doing well enough. We have a full fire alarm and emergency lighting. I`ll be doing a new fire risk assessment (IMHO one of the only "risk assessments" actually worth doing) and we`ll have a new fire exit door plus nice shiny panic bar fitted at the back of the building.

However, disabled access is also a hot topic, and though we have no stairlift (all our rooms are on the first floor - that`s up the stairs if you`re American) I have been told that fitting one means the fire exit then becomes narrowed and you comply with one rule/law/guideline only to be screwed over royally by another.

So I `phoned the Fire Service. Nice chap, meet `em everywhere; who said we`d probably be OK as we have TWO fire exits and staircases, but all this was actually GUIDANCE.

That`s fair enough. But if it all goes pear-shaped one day, I wonder how the Law will see it?

I`ll come back to the CQC, HTM and disabled access another day.

Denplan day tomorrow at Coombe Abbey near Coventry. That`ll be a good day.