GDC Reports on Whistleblowing
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- Published: Thursday, 10 October 2024 10:21
- Written by Peter Ingle
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An annual joint whistleblowing report is produced by the nine health and social care professional regulators, including the GDC. The latest report covering the period ending 31 March 2024 has now been published. The GDC use the GOV.UK definition: ‘You‘re a whistleblower if you‘re a worker and you report certain types of wrongdoing.
This will usually be something you’ve seen at work - though not always. The wrongdoing you disclose must be in the public interest. This means it must affect others, for example the general public.’ Crucially it adds, ‘As a whistleblower you’re protected by law - you should not be treated unfairly of lose your job because you ‘blow the whistle’.
In the period reported the GDC received 79 such disclosures of information. Of these 64 resulted in regulatory action, and for the remaining 15 no action was taken as a result of ‘insufficient information.’
All of the disclosures were made directly to the Fitness to Practise team. At the time of compiling the report, of the 79 whistleblowing concerns received: 37 were at still at the assessment stage, 15 had been referred to case examiners, and 27 had been closed with no further action.
The sources of the disclosures are also categorised, with 37 of the concerns being from dental professionals, 22 from non-registrants (who were employed in dentistry) and 20 that were anonymous.
Based upon their statutory framework, the GDC say that the action they take in response to a whistleblowing disclosure is the same as the regulatory action they would take with any other concern reported to them. They add that changes to their initial assessment process have enabled them to improve earlier identification of whistleblowing complaints. They identified conduct concerns as being raised in 39 of the 79 disclosures made to the GDC. These are defined as concerns that relate to matters around dental professionals’ behaviour, either in or outside the workplace.
During the period reported, the GDC reviewed and further amended their processes and procedures for the identification of whistleblowers. Responsibility for whistleblower identification has been moved to the GDC In House Legal Advisory Service. This has enabled them to take an early legal review of all cases to help identify whistleblowers, and provide better protection and support to them. There will also be changes to the GDC initial concern reporting webform, to allow individuals raising concerns to self-identify as whistleblowers.
Compared to other regulators, the GDC continue to have a higher proportion of disclosures relative to the size of the register. The GMC have about 330,000 registrants to the GDCs 121,000. In the period that the GDC received 79 disclosures, the GMC received 60.
Concerns in particular about the dental professions’ high rate of ‘blue on blue’ actions are not new. The GDC offer an explanation for this pointing out that a majority of dentistry is provided in a primary care setting and, in their words, “outside the more robust clinical governance framework that characterise some other forms of healthcare.” This may mean that alternative disclosure routes are less accessible in dentistry, and as a result a larger proportion are reported to the regulator.
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