Surviving the slow
A recent BDA survey found almost half of GDPs report low levels of life satisfaction and 60 per cent experience significant anxiety. How can this affect everyday practice? Here is one dentist’s story
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T ALL kicked off when I came back from holiday in July 2011. I was working as an associate in a new practice and got
a phone call from the senior partner. He asked me to meet him in the practice before I returned to work that Monday. In the meeting he said he wasn’t happy
with the treatment provided to a few of my patients and wanted me to take some time off from work and reassess things. He then subsequently reported me to the health board as being unfit to practise and terminated my contract. I didn’t see it coming the way it did, to be
honest. I had gone through some pretty stressful times in the years building up to 2011. Te last couple of years had been particularly hellish. I knew I had taken my eye off the ball a little bit but hadn’t realised by how much. I was at a low point and was no longer enjoying being a dentist but I didn’t think it had affected my clinical ability. To be honest, at that stage I thought I
had got through the worst of it. When I returned from holiday I felt the best I had for years – refreshed and actually looking forward to getting back to work. My first thought aſter being told not to come back was that this was it: I’ll never work as a dentist again. In those first few days I started thinking I could just walk away from it. My wife’s thought was that if dentistry was making me that unhappy then do something else. But then something strange happened. It took me maybe a couple of weeks but when
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I realised I would have no more dealings with patients, I knew I would miss it. I would miss it very badly.
Letter of complaint More immediately I phoned the MDDUS for advice and met with one of the dental advisers. He looked at some of my record cards and pointed out deficiencies and tabled them into what I needed to improve upon. I also self-referred for remediation with an NHS education programme and formulated a PDP to improve on areas of practice including treatment planning and clinical record keeping. We devised an action plan and I presented it to one of the dental advisers from the health board. We had a meeting in November of 2011 and on the back of that they were happy to award me a new list number and let me work again. I went back to work initially part-time
in December 2011 and then eventually full-time again. I also changed tack and started working in the salaried service rather than as a general practitioner. I found this much less stressful. Also my attitude was different by that point; I had kind of sorted myself out. In the meantime I received a letter of
complaint from a patient who had been trying to get in touch with me for months but my former practice had not passed on contact details. Before I could check the records to respond to the complaint she contacted the GDC. I felt at the time that
SUMMONS
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