GDC: Lay Council ignores safety advice over registrants' addresses
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- Published: Friday, 13 November 2015 05:26
- Written by News Editor
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At a recent meeting of the General Dental Council (GDC), the Council made no decision to change their policy of insisting that GDC website must publish the full home or practice address of all registrants. A working group was formed to look into this matter again. The lay members of the Council rejected safety arguments from their own executive, from a personal safety campaign and a major petition against such disclosure. This decision means the GDC falls outside the norm of other comparable regulators in the UK in this matter.
The Council discussed this at their October meeting:
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Aboutus/Thecouncil/Pages/Council-meetings-2015.aspx
The Council received a report they had commissioned on this issue. Research carried out by the GDC indicated that 70% of respondents agreed there were circumstances where ‘detriment’ could be caused to a dental professional by publishing their address on the GDC register, only 6% of respondents disagreed. The top five reasons for agreeing with this statement in order of priority were: “if a registrant provides their home address”, “stalking/being threatened”, “If the registrant is in dispute with a patient”, “safety” and “privacy”. When asked directly, only 15% of respondents indicated that their preference would be to include a full address on the register with a total of 82% indicating they would either prefer a general location, or no location at all.
All the papers received by the GDC indicated that most registrants, as well as the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, had advised against the publication of the registrant's address on the GDC website, proposing instead just the town. This is the method used by both the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
The GDC paper listed four options for action and recommended that they should collect the same amount of information, but only publish the town of the registered address. From information received by GDPUK it appears that the lay members of the Council took exception to this and wanted full transparency. They appeared not to see the safety issues nor logic in the Council Executive’s view that they should fall into line with other regulators. It is reported that one dentist was particularly incensed that the GDC council members would not see sense.
In addition, a petition started by Victoria Holden calling on the GDC to stop publishing dental registrants’ addresses was also ignored. This has had over 1750 signatories to date.
https://www.change.org/p/general-dental-council-stop-publishing-dental-registrants-addresses
At the 2014 Conference of Local Dental Committees, which followed on from this petition, the issue was discussed as a motion and LDC delegates voted unanimously against the continued publication of full addresses. This wide body of opinion was also ignored by the GDC lay members.
This issue is not about the dental team hiding from the public, some registrants have no option but to use their home address. This decision means they cannot retain that privacy and security. Members of the public could still seek access to an address from the GDC, who maintain the register to protect the public, and access would be recorded and therefore made more secure.
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