Revalidation
Skills check-up T
The General Dental Council has launched a consultation on a new system of checks that will ensure dentists are meeting the minimum standards, writes Denis Toppin
he term revalidation has been floating around the medical profession for some years now. Plans to introduce it for doctors in the UK have been under
discussion for quite some time. The current proposals for the introduc- tion of revalidation were triggered by The Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, which concluded that the NHS and General Medical Council did not have the systems or culture in place that would have allowed the conduct of someone like Harold Shipman to be detected. Following publication of the report, Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England, was asked to undertake a broad review of medical regulation which led in 2007 to the publication of the White Paper: Trust, Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st century. This led to the passing of legislation in 2008 granting the powers to establish revalidation. In spite of delays, the General Medical
Council recently confirmed its plans to introduce medical revalidation in 2012. The General Dental Council (GDC) is also mov- ing ahead with developing its own scheme and is currently consulting on the issue.
As a dentist working in Scotland, I am
well aware of the demands regulation is putting on the profession. The second part of the Scottish Government’s consultation on the regulation of independent health- care has recently closed, the Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme started at the end of November and already in place are the health board inspections, vocational training practice inspections and, of course, registration with the GDC. But our plans for revalidation are about
individuals. It’s about protecting patients by ensuring you’re giving them the best pos- sible care. You may well be at the top of your game as far as technology and practices go when you first register with us, but we want to ensure it stays that way throughout your entire career. The scheme, for the first time, will provide a proactive way of checking that dental professionals carry on meeting our standards after they join our registers. The GDC’s fitness to practise proce-
dures are reactive rather than proactive; they assume that dental professionals meet its standards unless information to suggest otherwise is received. That is not good enough. Patients believe and expect that dental professionals’ compliance with stan- dards is checked on a regular basis and are
surprised to find this doesn’t happen. Revalidation will bring reality into line with their expectations. Now is the time to have your say on what
we’re planning through our consultation, which is open on our website
www.gdc-
uk.org now and runs until January next year. The consultation document sets out the GDC’s proposals for revalidating dentists. We don’t plan to consider in-depth whether revalidation is necessary for dental care professionals (DCPs) until the random audit of their first cycle of continuing pro- fessional development (CPD) is complete in late 2013. However, their views on this consultation would be very welcome. Put simply, the philosophy behind the
proposals is to avoid over-regulation by making as much use of existing systems within dentistry as possible. It should be seen as a very useful extension of what den- tal professionals are already doing with CPD – which is an earnest attempt to keep themselves up to date. It’s far from a panacea, nothing can remove all risk, but what we need is a scheme that isn’t too bur- densome and that will give that additional reassurance to patients and the public.
Continued » Scottish Dental magazine 39
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