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Looking for dental treatment? Use NHS online tool to check eligibility

THE NHS campaign “check before you tick” highlights the handy online tool to check eligibility for dental treatment.

It takes you through a few simple questions and takes less than five minutes to complete.


The activity is an extension of the ongoing ‘check before you tick’ prescriptions campaign which was launched in September 2018, helping people to understand if they are entitled to free prescriptions and how to claim correctly to avoid unnecessary penalty charges.

Not all benefits entitle you to free dental treatment. If you claim when you are not entitled, you could face a penalty of £100 plus the cost of your treatment. To avoid this situation, always check before you tick.

Link to the tool-nhs.uk/checkbeforeyoutick

“The eligibility checker is a great tool to check if you’re entitled to free or reduced-cost dental treatment, by answering some simple questions. It only takes a few minutes. And if you do need to pay, it can tell you about other means of help with your costs. So always ‘check before you tick’ at nhs.uk/checkbeforeyoutick,” says Dentist Chirag Shah.

The steps are simple. First, search “check before you tick” online and use the NHS eligibility checker to understand if you’re entitled to free or reduced-cost NHS dental treatment.

It also helps explain other means of NHS support to reduce costs, such as the NHS Low Income Scheme.

The online eligibility checker can also tell you about other NHS support available to help you with costs for prescriptions, dental treatment and eye care.

To know more about help available-nhs.uk/healthcosts

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Racist incidents against NHS nurses rise 78 per cent

The RCN says calls from ethnic minority nurses reporting racism rose by 70 per cent between 2022 and 2025

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Racist incidents against NHS nurses rise 78 per cent

Highlights

  • Nursing staff reported 6,812 racist incidents in 2025, up from 3,652 in 2022.
  • RCN warns real figures are far higher due to widespread under-reporting.
  • From October, NHS employers will be legally liable for harassment of staff by patients.
Racist abuse against NHS nurses has gone up sharply. New figures show a 78 per cent rise in reported incidents over the past four years.
The Royal College of Nursing gathered this data through Freedom of Information requests sent to NHS trusts and health boards across the UK.
The findings show that nursing staff reported more than 21,000 incidents of racial abuse between 2022 and 2025. In 2025 alone, there were 6,812 incidents, up from 3,652 in 2022.
That means a new report of racist abuse was being made every 77 minutes somewhere in the NHS.

The incidents paint a disturbing picture of what many nurses face on a daily basis. One nurse was called a monkey by a colleague.

A patient threw a hot drink at a nurse and then followed it with racial abuse. In one case, a patient's family said they did not want black nurses looking after their relative.

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