GDPUK.com is for dentists and dental professionals to discuss all aspects of their profession, their practice and their business, centred on the UK. Subjects dissected have been diverse, from tips on simple techniques to guidance on buying major equipment, to discussions on the various practice management software packages, and of ongoing developments in British dental politics.

Established since 1997.

Moderated in Manchester, England by Dr Tony Jacobs BDS, the Group was started in Summer 1997, and continues to grow rapidly. Tony continues to work in his family general dental practice in Manchester.

Dental News

GDPUK.com also publishes UK dental news, and has had many exclusive stories, as well as being able to publish the latest news relevant to dentistry before other dental news providers. Latest news.

Blogs

In addition GDPUK blogs, both editorial and product updates are well read throughout the dental profession and industry. Latest blogs here.

GDPUK Forum

The group now has over 10,000 members, and attracts interest and sponsorship from major companies involved in the dental trade. The forum has had over 22,000 topics created and over 254,000 replies. That is 11.5 replies for every thread created! A huge amount of content and information.

Joining the Forum

The site remains free to join for all members of the dental profession. Register here.

Advertising

Advertisers can look forward to their banners being displayed thousands of times in a verified manner, using professional banner server software, to a targeted group of UK dental professionals.

Media Pack

Revenue is generated on the site by companies in the Dental trade, advertising on the site. More information about what GDPUK can offer our advertisers, can be found in our latest media pack. Please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for the latest media pack.

Further Information

For further information on what GDPUK can offer, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Jonny will be attending both the upcoming Dentistry Show and BDA Show, get in touch if you would like to arrange to meet up.

20 Years of GDPUK

The site was established in 1997 and this year marks the 20th year anniversary of dentists talking to each other using the GDPUK medium. To mark the occasion we will be hosting a conference on Friday 17th November in Manchester. More details to follow.

20th Anniversary Publication.

We are currently putting together a publication that will be published in digital form in November 2017 around the time of the conference. If you would like to contribute to this please get in touch. We will also have advertising opportunities available at the conference and in the publication. For further information, please get in touch.

Denplan, the UK’s leading dental payment plan specialist, has welcomed George Osborne’s call for clearer dental pricing and treatment plans in HM Treasury’s “A Better Deal” report, which was published this week. 

The report stated that pricing for dentistry can be opaque and confusing and that the government wants to ensure that dentist treatment plans and price lists are clear and easily accessible, empowering patients in England to make the best choices.

Roger Matthews, Chief Dental Officer at Denplan said: “Clear communication between dentists and patients is fundamental in every dental practice, especially in regards to treatment plans and pricing. We strongly agree with the Chancellor’s statement in the report that all dental patients should have access to the information they need to make the right decisions about their dental care.

“Denplan encourages all member dental practices to build in enough discussion time with their patients to allow them to explain treatment options and any associated costs. Denplan is also a co-originator and signatory of the BDA Private Dental Plans Code of Practice. The code emphasises the need to provide patients with adequate information about the choices available, work with clear and fair contracts, ensure they understand the payment procedures for each option and, where appropriate, any on-going costs or exclusions, and have in place a system for dealing with complaints and feedback.”

Denplan has a range of support services available to its member dentists and this includes providing regular guidance and materials for practices to use. Roger Matthews continued:

“Denplan member practices are able to access a price list template to ensure they are following the General Dental Council’s standards which requires practices to display their price lists. Through a network of field-based consultants across the UK (supported by an office-based team), Denplan also works continually with member practices to provide business support, which includes helping practices to set their fees fairly.”

In a 2014 Denplan patient survey of over 8,800 patients, 90% said that Denplan allows them to budget for their dental care and treatment^*. Roger Matthews added: “We find that patients appreciate the clarity that comes with a dental payment plan as they prefer to know exactly what their dental care is going to cost each month without any unexpected bills.”

“Osborne’s report today should serve as a sharp reminder to all types of practices (NHS or private) on the requirement to provide patients with the most comprehensive information on treatment options and pricing. If greater transparency in this area helps patients make more informed choices about their dental care and oral health it can only be a positive step forward for dentistry.”

www.denplan.co.uk

*Your Denplan Survey Oct-Dec 2014. Total respondents: 8,802.

Although dental implants have been used for around fifty to sixty years, it used to be that they were considered very much a last resort, and only really meant for those patients who really struggled with their dentures.  However, with recent advances in cosmetic dentistry, and the accessibility thereof, people are beginning to realise that there is a better, more comfortable and potentially more permanent way. Dental implants, whereby a biocompatible titanium screw, inserted into the jawbone, replaces the failed root of the tooth with a prosthetic tooth, crown or bridge are becoming more and more popular.  Whilst they’re still considered ‘cosmetic’ dentistry they bring far more benefits than just a lovely smile – they can improve speech which has been affected by tooth loss; improve eating and allow the patient to eat foods which may otherwise cause them a problem; prevent deterioration of the surrounding bone; have no negative impact on surrounding teeth and, due to their completely natural appearance and feel, dramatically improve confidence and self-esteem.

As with all cutting-edge techniques, people may have concerns about whether dental implants are for them, what problems may occur, and most commonly, how long will they last?  After all, a smile is possibly the most clear and instant form of non-verbal communication and if that’s compromised then life in general can be adversely affected.

The simple – and rather reassuring - answer is that, as dental implants actually fuse with the bone, they could quite literally last a lifetime (although, as with other surgical implant procedures, there is no lifetime guarantee) and cared for correctly, should certainly last many years.  This also makes them an economical solution in the longer term, as the initial treatment can cost little more than more conventional options.  However – and this is a big however – this very much depends on two important aspects:

1.      Expert Aftercare

This is why it is so crucial to ensure you use the very best specialist dental practice, one which has an exceptional reputation in dental implants and restorative dental treatment.  When researching which to use, you will need a comprehensive examination and consultation resulting in a distinct and individual treatment plan detailing exactly what treatment is proposed, the total cost of the procedure, what experience the dentist has in this work, and what the alternatives, if any, could be. 

They should provide clear guidance and instruction on how best to care for your implants along with regular maintenance appointments and ideally as much help and advice as you need, even long after treatment has finished.

2.      Ongoing Hygiene Care

Meticulous hygiene, inter-dental cleaning, perhaps an anti-bacterial mouthwash and regular check-ups are imperative whether teeth are natural or not and the general health of the rest of the mouth and gums is fundamental to the success of implants – as well as the longevity of natural teeth. 

Implants themselves do not decay but the build-up of plaque around the surrounding gum can cause inflammation which may even lead to peri-implantitis, a bacterial infection which causes gradual loss of the bone supporting the implant, and the ultimate failure of implants.  Inadequate oral hygiene is the number one cause of failed dental implants.

A healthy diet, avoiding sugary foods as much as possible is also vital to all dental health and thus the success of implanted teeth, as is the avoidance of smoking.

Observation of common sense dental care and overall good health, along with an expert practitioner will give the very best chance of your implants lasting for a very long time – and give you reason to smile for many years to come.

Article supplied by London City Smiles, specialists in dental implants and cosmetic dentistry procedures.

At GDPUK towers we love to keep an eye on the statistics that the site creates. We want to make sure we are still doing all the right things to attract an audience that stays engaged with the site and of course interacting on the forum.

Below are a few stats we would like to share, we are very proud of these and they show that GDPUK is constantly used for news, views, opinion and information.

These stats are up to date, as of 30th June 2015.

• In June 2015 alone, we have had over 100,000 opens of our daily digest emails (sent 3 times a day)

• We published a news story on Friday 26th June called “GDC labelled worst of all regulators”. As of Monday afternoon we have had over 4500 readers. This shows the reach of GDPUK news by using various social media platforms and our daily digest email.

• This year, the site averages 32,000 unique visitors a month

• Users continue to join the site, membership is now getting close to 9000 people, who are all members of the dental community.

• The forum attracts just over 1000 different contributors a year.

• Whilst on the topic of the forum, it continues to attract readers and plenty of engagement. Since our present site went live (late 2008), there have been 18653 topics created and 209771 posts. An average of 11 replies a post. This definitely demonstrates the amazing amount of discussion and activity that takes place on the forum.

By sharing these stats we want to demonstrate the reach of GDPUK and how we feel we get important dental news in front of thousands of readers daily. Thanks for sharing, engaging and reading the site, we appreciate the great dental community that continues to support us.

If you would like to join the forum (it’s free) and get a feel for what is happening in UK dentistry in 2015, please follow this link. If you are already a member, keep spreading the word and telling your colleagues about the site :)

Thanks for reading, please get in This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with me if you would like further information on GDPUK.

Jonny

We all have habits. We all do things in our own way, at the time we like and at a time that is convenient for ourselves.

Social Media has become a habit in many of our lives; we look at Facebook or Twitter in the morning or the same online news page. There is one major reason behind visiting these sites; you are looking to see what is new. You visit the same pages or social media sites because it has become a habit.

This habit formation I am talking about is extremely prevalent in online communities. Reading GDPUK is a habit to thousands of dentists every day, our members want to see what is new, how discussions have evolved or discuss a piece of dental news that has caught their eye.

Members of a community want to know what people like themselves are doing, thinking, using and reading. The site is constantly evolving and changing on an hourly basis because of the four actions listed above and that is what keeps people coming back.  It is human nature to be attracted to the latest news and find out what your peers thinks about it. We can all think of examples of this, a story on Facebook, the latest football transfer gossip on the BBC sport website or a heated discussion on the GDPUK forum.

This is the amazing advantage of online communities and their constantly evolving nature. The GDPUK forum is an invaluable tool for dentists because as well as reading & learning like in traditional publications, users can also participate and share ideas. The site then becomes addictive and then of course a habit!

What are your habits? Has GDPUK become a daily habit for you? Do you have a daily social media habit?

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Impressed by the numbers? Get in touch to find out how we can work together.

Advertising on GDPUK.com starts from £300 + vat

For further information email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 0161 270 0453

www.gdpuk.com/web

GDPUK Launches UK Dental Calendar

At the beginning of the year, we launched a new feature on the GDPUK Site. This feature is the “Dental Calendar”. The Dental Calendar will be a central area for everyone from the dental profession to know what is taking place in the world of UK Dentistry. 

As long as you are signed into the site, anyone from the profession can add events, seminars, training and exhibitions to the Event List. We believe this is an exciting addition to the dental landscape. Firstly it is a great way of promoting an event and secondly it makes the profession aware of events taking place close to them or that there is a specific course taking place, that potentially they would not have been aware of.  We hope it can become a really handy resource for the dental community.

How to use?

Once logged into the site, the dental calendar tab drops down to offer the option of “adding an event” as the image below demonstrates.

Once the tab is clicked you can then add the event by following the form, which is easy to use and should only take a matter of minutes. Pictures, the date and location are simple to enter. Once added the event is then added to the event list and can be viewed by the whole dental community.

Currently events can be shared on Twitter and Google plus, which means that you can publicise the event to the wider dental world.

Going forward we will also use the twitter handle of @DentalCalendar to publicise when something is added to the calendar. Please get following!

Future Use?

The calendar will take some time to become established and used widely. Once it is used regularly, we envisage the calendar being used in a number of ways. 

• Featured events – for a small fee, organisations could feature their event on the calendar and ensure it gets maximum exposure.
• Ticket Sales – Places on courses could be booked and paid for on the GDPUK Site. GDPUK would act as a ticket agent and help an organisation with the sales of the tickets to a particular event.
• Specific Banner Adverts – There is an opportunity for a dental organisation to sponsor / associate their business with the calendar. To discuss the opportunity further please get in contact with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• For the upcoming Contract Reform Roadshow in Manchester on the 30^th Jan, the dentists attending have been registering through the GDPUK Site. This has so far attracted a few hundred registrations, a figure that is continually rising. More information can be found here about the roadshow. Feel free to register. 

Thanks for reading about the dental calendar. We hope you enjoy using the calendar. If you have any feedback about the calendar or have any further questions. Please get in touch. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

To register for the largest dental community in the UK and full use of the calendar, please follow this link - https://www.gdpuk.com/forum/user/register

This period of low interest rates in the UK combined with changes in society and demographics have had some long term effects which are far from coming to roost. Since the financial collapses of 2008, UK Government policies have been to minimize the economic shock; people have been protected by saving the banks from failure and also by continuing low interest rates. 

History tells us that economic policies designed to insulate from short term shock tend to come with a long term consequences. But no-one has thought about a cohort affected more badly by this economic effect, hard working young adults. They have to deal with high property prices and high rents, less secure employment together with rock bottom interest rates if they manage to save, but high interest rates if they have credit card or pay day debts.

Will there be friction between the younger generation whose lives are markedly different from their parents in so many ways? There hasn't been a revolution or even a rebellion, just a combination of changes of circumstance in society at large – greater access to further education, starting careers later on average, starting families later, so many important aspects of life have been shifted by a few years.

One piece of good economic news in the UK, along with growth of the economy, has been the gradual fall in the employment rate in late 2013 and early 2014. However, in UK dentistry, this seems to be in reverse, through unintended consequences, and the combination of many seemingly unaccountable people acting in what they think is the right way, but having a terrible effect on the lives of young dental graduates.

In our dental profession we are now seeing, possibly for the first time in history, unemployment of newly qualified dental professionals. What is now known as the Dental Foundation Training [DF1] scheme, which was commenced as an educational process to help young graduates move to the pressures of working as a trusted professional from those of a dental student. This scheme has now, over many years, become a requirement that dental graduates must complete before they can do any work within the NHS. They have to have a "performer number", obtained by joining then completing this scheme. 

Interestingly, graduates of dentistry from the EU do not have to gain this requirement in order to work in the NHS. However, in the present national foundation dentistry scheme, EU dental graduates have equal standing with UK graduates, and each year some of those from the UK miss out, and cannot work. They may reapply but can only enter the recruitment process twice. After that, if they fail to get through an interview and psychometric assessments, they can have no future career in NHS dentistry EVER.

In the interview process which started in November 2013, with results issued in mid January with no fanfare nor press release, it is estimated [and this is a SHOCKING figure] that more than 10% of UK dental graduates have been left with no employment next summer when they graduate.

What a waste of studying, hours of hard work and sacrifice. Students these days live from loans, those qualifying presently have student debts around £30,000 with potentially no prospect of working in dentistry. Last year, tuition fees rose to £9,000 per annum, so those qualifying soon will have debts of £60,000 or more, yet carry this risk of not having a job when they pass their university examinations and graduate. A further insult is the 18 month rule, where applicants have two chances to apply and go through the process. If then unsuccessful, the artificial rule that bars them from following their career in the UK adds to the injustice.

In addition, this pre-judgment of their chance of a career is insulting and morale sapping, to say the least, before even sitting for their final exams, which seems to relegate those exams, which are the true arbiter of whom is fit to practice, not this FD1 assessment.

Dental colleagues rightly ask where is the British Dental Association in all this? Cannot the dental schools do something – teams of staff there must be angrier than GDPs. And what about COPDEND, who administer this – you must know what is going on? Why can someone take the problem by the horns and change something to benefit UK dental graduates and exclude EU nationals qualifying elsewhere in the EU? Even if you believe there is a risk of breaking an EU law, surely that is better than wrecking the careers and morale of hundreds of young dentists, prejudging the results of their university finals?

The inter-generational friction I referred to earlier might surface in the dental school. Morale must have been affected by this unjust system, university staff must feel that action must be taken for the sake of those they educate. 

This is now the third year of this disastrous situation – something must be done, someone must take responsibility, and make the system fair for UK dental students.

1. COPDEND DF1 Policy statement: http://www.copdend.org/content.aspx?Group=foundation&Page=foundation_policystatement
2. GDPUK forum discussion: https://www.gdpuk.com/forum/gdpuk-forum/vt-national-recruitment-process-opens-9971 [this page requires a GDPUK login]

After some number crunching over the holiday period we were proud to discover that in 2013, the GDPUK forum had 958 different contributors. The fact that just under a thousand different members of the dental community have “put their head above the parapet“ during the year on the forum pages is a fantastic sign of the growth of the forum and the number of subjects that provide discussion in UK Dentistry.

Moving into 2014, we now have thousands of members who are part of the community. With just under a thousand people posting last year, there were thousands on the sidelines who quietly read the posts. They represent the silent majority who we can see in every community, they are part of it, they enjoy it, but they don’t get involved. If you would like to join the GDPUK community, please follow this link. The forum is free to join for all members of the dental profession. You will find the forum is a fantastic resource for advice, opinion and information on UK Dentistry.

Overall in 2013, we averaged 3300 visits a day to the site, the equivalent of the number of people who visit a UK Dental Exhibition in a day. The difference is that we are getting those numbers every day of the year! The site continues to publish exclusive news and shape the agenda of UK Dentistry. For example, GDPUK was used as a sounding board to compose the letter that was recently published in the Daily Telegraph - http://bit.ly/JKkA3J

GDPUK is free for dentists or dental professionals to join. The site earns revenue from dental focused organisations advertising on the forum, news, blogs or daily digest emails. If you would like to find out more about the advertising opportunities, please get in This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Thanks for everyone’s support and help in 2013, please continue to contribute, share and discuss all things dental. We look forward to an excellent 2014 for all and well over a thousand contributors to the GDPUK Forum!

If you would like to register for the site please follow this link - https://www.gdpuk.com/forum/user/register

To refer a colleague or friend to the site - https://www.gdpuk.com/more/refer-a-colleague-to-gdpuk

For information on how to advertise on GDPUK or to download a media pack - https://www.gdpuk.com/overview or alternatively please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. who will be happy to help. We will also be visiting the Dentistry Show on Friday 28th February, please get in touch if you would like to meet up and have a coffee.