Whitening debate Continued »


as a third admin and yet the three of us were still being overwhelmed by the amount of reports and messages we were getting. We were up to 900 likes within a week! We decided that we had to get


a strategy worked out quickly as to how to harness the support we were getting and try to bring about change. It is much bigger than protecting our profession, it is all about public safety and clearly the public are being put at risk when they entrust their oral health to these technicians. We’ve found out that the training


companies offer a one-day course in which the trainees are taught how to identify gum disease, caries, crowns/veneers/dentures, how to perform the treatment and finally how to market their busi- ness. This is taught over the space of eight hours and then the trainee receives a certificate allowing them to go out and provide power whitening. They don’t have to concern them-


selves with vaccinations, clinical waste contracts, decontamination protocol, CQC registration, first aid or CPR training. They have no regulation whatsoever and it seems that anyone with £ı,500 to £3,000 can train and set up their business. We have been shocked by


how widespread the business really is. So far, we’ve uncovered two dentists not registered with the GDC offering whitening and training on how to perform whitening and a dental surgeon removed from the GDC register also selling whitening training. We’ve also witnessed whitening companies performing whitening en masse at a beauty show and bridal fair with no hand washing facilities, no gloves in evidence, no disinfecting or sterilisation proce- dures between clients, no medical history checking, no auditable trail of clients treated and the public isn’t aware of anything out of order. We’ve found salons advertising


with fake awards on their windows and marketing material, misleading claims of “up to 28 shades lighter in 20 minutes”, “whitening specialist using the only desensitising light in the UK”, “trained by the top UK whitening specialist”, “20ıı Dentistry


awards best whitening product”. They can look very professional


and the public don’t stop to check if these accreditations are real or false. One company even had a GDC number showing for the dentist providing the treatment and, when it was checked on the register, there was no such number in existence. We have notified the GDC of


everything we’ve uncovered so far and have put together templates for complaints to Trading Stand- ards, MPs, magazines, health editors of national newspapers and email addresses for sending the complaints to. I have been delighted by the support from the dental community and it’s amazing how us pulling together has helped make some changes in the few weeks since the page was started. We have managed to secure


a statement from Groupon that it will no longer be running any deals without a GDC number for the person performing the treat- ment. Boots has also withdrawn a product from sale that allowed the purchaser to take their own impres- sion and send it off to receive a custom-made bleaching tray and the syringes of whitening gel. And a whitening company was put under pressure to stand down from the Dentistry Show at the NEC in Birmingham, due to complaints from the dental community. The company in question has several whitening clinics that do not have any GDC registrants providing the treatment, but was hoping to branch out into mainstream dentistry and sell its products to GDC-registered dentists. The firm stood down from the show approximately 24 hours before it opened. We have had interest from a


television production company in covering the illegal whitening issue and they have already filmed undercover at a public event where whitening was taking place. We were invited to speak at the Dentistry Show in Birmingham and Enlighten changed its programme of talks to include a debate on illegal whitening. The dental profes- sionals in our talk were shocked by the images that we had uncovered and shocked to hear about how widespread the problem is. We now have more than ı,500 members on our Stamp Out Illegal


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Beverley Carlyle has worked in dentistry for 22 years, starting out as a dental nurse in Northern Ireland and working in both NHS and private prac- tices. She had an interest in dental implants and worked along- side several implantologists for many years. Beverley decided to move into management and was given training in devel- oping my team and managing the business, moving to Edinburgh in 2005 and working for the Scottish Dental Implant Centre before moving to manage two practices in Edinburgh for Integrated Dental Holdings. She relocated back to Northern Ireland in 2010 and has been working as a business development manager for Ballynahinch Dental Care.


Tooth Whitening Facebook page and we need more help. We are asking that everyone shares and likes our page, uses the template letters on there to send reports of illegal practice to the GDC and Trading Standards and hopefully, with the support of the dental community, we can approach more companies such as eBay and Amazon to stop them selling illegal strengths of up to 36 per cent hydrogen peroxide to the general public. We hope to get our message out


to the beauty colleges so that all trainee beauticians know that they are wasting their money if they enrol in a tooth whitening course and that they will be at risk of prosecution if they undertake the treatment. We will endeavour to get as


much press and media coverage as possible to get the message out to the general public that they are endangering their health and oral health by visiting these technicians and, hopefully, people will respond and stop putting themselves at risk. We hope to meet with the


General Dental Council someday to find out what is happening and why there have only been a handful of prosecutions so far. Of course, we understand that the legislation was only changed in October 20ı2 and it is a lengthy procedure to collect evidence and put together a case to prosecute someone for the illegal practice of dentistry, but we hope to get some understanding as to how the reports are dealt with and what will be happening going forward. In the meantime, our page will


continue to receive reports and publish images that demonstrate the damage being done by non-dental professionals and we will continue to raise public awareness of the dangers of this unsafe, unregulated practice. For further information on what we’ve uncovered so far, letter templates and address for reporting, please visit our page and hit like and share. We can’t do without your support


and with it, we can bring about a change.


®


Visit www.facebook.com/ StampOutIllegalToothWhitening for more details.


Scottish Dental magazine 23


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