Last week, it emerged that the government is in the process of improving the efficiency of international GDC registration.
Following a public consultation, the government kicked off the process of reforming legislation to enable the General Dental Council (GDC) to improve international registration.
The proposed changes will affect the assessment system, including Overseas Registration Exams (ORE), speed up the process of international registration and give more flexibility to the GDC.
We hear from two dental professionals who argue why the flaws in the GDC registration process are not limited to overseas dentists.
Rob Birnie
The biggest problem at the moment is registration of dental nurses.
The GDC is several months behind the curve and it is killing dental practices. Plus there is a massive anomaly in the system.
We can have a trainee nurse working at the chairside after a couple of days, so long as the nurse is enrolled in a training course. So a person with virtually no experience can be at the chairside acting as a dental nurse.
However, a qualified dental nurse returning to the dental practice cannot work until the registration application has been processed by the GDC and is complete.
‘Business is suffering’
The dentist can have checked that the CPD hours comply, could have checked the DBS complies but this nurse needs to wait until the registration has been done by the almighty GDC.
The GDC have answered this problem by saying that they have a problem with their staff members and their ability to deal with the applications, ie unqualified/trainees being asked to process applications that should be rubber stamped.
I have staff nurses waiting to work who cannot work in surgery, who have satisfied the requirements but have to sit on the reception desk because the GDC cannot process the applications in a timely manner.
My business is suffering. We will be cancelling lists of patients because of the time it is taking to process their applications.
I believe this is something that should be on the front of the daily newspapers to give the GDC a kick up the proverbial.
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Anonymous
Let’s make it easier for a UK qualified dentist to register. The registration process for newly qualified dentists is disgraceful. The stress caused is so unnecessary and avoidable.
If a dental student passes their final exams and has proved to have reached the necessary standards then they should automatically be able to progress into FT.
Instead, many of them have a mountain of bureaucratic admin to process to become compliant. It seems that several private companies run this process. None of them coordinate their data resulting in double or triple the work involved.
‘Are they qualified or not?’
Organising blood tests from Occupational Health as requested by the employer is so unnecessary. These dental students have been practising up to the point of qualifying without being tested every day, so why now? It’s so random.
Some dentists have never had a blood test following qualification. If this really is a necessary requirement then why is it not done at the dental school prior to qualifying? The wasted money involved in this process is crazy.
They have to register with the GDC, have blood tests at Occupational Health, try to get an NHS performers number and comply with the lead employer who will threaten to term their employment because someone in the admin chain has the wrong information but is too inflexible to make the process work.
This drags on for many months over the summer when they should be celebrating and into their employment.
This should not happen. Are they qualified or not? If they are not compliant then they should not qualify. They should be able to progress automatically, receive a GDC number and NHS performers number.
In fact, not everyone even gets a FT place because there aren’t enough FT places. Do the overseas dentists have to do FT? Surely make sure that every UK dentist can get a FT place.
That should be the basics. Newly-qualified dentists are not even doing FT because the registration process is such a nightmare. What a shame and such a waste.
GDC response
GDC associate director, registration, Jon Harris, said: ‘Managing the registers of dental professionals, ensuring those on the registers have the required knowledge, experience and indemnity to practise in the UK, is one of the ways we fulfil our primary purpose of maintaining public safety and confidence in dental services.
‘We aim to progress registration applications as rapidly as possible, and we recognise our performance on UK qualified routes to registration is not currently where we need it to be. There are several reasons for this, but the greatest driver is team resource.
‘Due to recruitment challenges and illness, the capacity of the team which processes UK applications was reduced by 40% between June and August this year, one of the busiest application periods in the calendar.
Common application issues
‘A very high proportion of dental nurse applications also arrive without the necessary evidence. We have recently written to the organisations which train dental nurses to request that they support their trainees with their applications, highlighting some common application issues, and urging that the application checklist is closely followed.
‘A recent sample of applications found that 97% were incomplete, and these all need to be returned to the applicant which causes significant unnecessary delay.
‘We are working through current applications as quickly as we can, and to aid this we have introduced new efficiencies to speed up the processes where possible, are offering weekend overtime to boost our output, and have completed cross-training between teams to provide greater resilience against resourcing issues in future.’
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