A new term. A new year. Perhaps new hope?

To our new dental students, who now benefit from the October start and therefore have another month of lie-ins [sorry, preparation]  we all wish you very good luck in your studies.  

Of course we would like to be able to tell you what sort of career you can look forward to.   

This fast moving world of dentistry is surprisingly slow to change. Predicting the changes appears to be pretty hard.  Predicting that there WILL be change is easy.

In 5 years time of course the “New Contract” [You know -  that Traffic Light disaster as we will all be referring to it !!]  will have been in place for 3 years and if the current situation is anything to go by some 60-100 of you will not get on to your first years post graduation training and be left wondering to which country you should export your new skills? May we, the older grunts, suggest you plan now!!

HOPE FOR THE STAFF ?

It is also, of course, a new term for the “Staff”. The new members of the GDC are to be encouraged and welcomed as they ponder their Statutory responsibility and Strategic role.  For £80K a year pro rata, it’s a fair little earner, truth be known.

I wonder what they will do in the next 5 years. Will they wait until 2018 before Standards 2 is issued with yet more “musts” or will they feel inclined to start on it now?  It seems like almost overnight, the profession has been denied its self regulatory status and no longer welcomes a broad church of multi skilled colleagues all plying their trade in the way they see fit.  

What we have now from the GDC is prescriptive, and inherently threatening. Can anyone see this changing other than for yet more regulatory prescription?

The bar has been raised, and if I were a new student, I would wonder if I could ever clamber over it.

A New Year, yes. Dare we hope for something better?    Hmmm.

Is the new GDC a legacy of which we can be proud for our new students in 5 years time?  Well, only if the new GDC stop seeing themselves as the sole arbiter of practice.  

This, sadly, is unlikely. I see the new GDC as yet another threat to the independence of the profession of dentistry, and perversely, not quite to the benefit of the patient they perhaps imagine. Dentists always adapt their behaviour to the climate.  What will the unexpected disadvantages be to all this presciptive instruction on how to behave?   But hey, for eighty grand a head, I wonder if they care.

The new General Dental Council to this mere mortal GDP is looking more like the Gravy-train for Dental  Committees.

Must go, have an important meeting to discuss the new concept, "Some hope"

Love you x