Many of you who read the previous two blog posts in relation to this series (which can be read here and here) will understand that I initially intended to publish an account of my experience with the General Dental Council and a patient complaint, which ended up proceeding to Investigation Committee Hearing. I produced the first of those blogs which was published a couple of weeks ago and intended to publish the additional blogs on the days following this.
To be entirely honest the response to the initial blog was absolutely overwhelming and staggering. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the people to whom I haven’t replied who have contacted me either by telephone, text, Facebook message, Twitter message, email or comments on the blog. I am lead to believe that there are Facebook pages where the blog was viewed tens of thousands of times and the comments from individual dentists were astonishing.
The stories that I have heard have been heart breaking, some of them terrible, and also others which I guess would be relevant for proceeding through General Dental Council investigations. From my point of view, people advised me not to publish any further blogs and not to stick my neck in the air. I considered this long and hard and took advice from many different people who are well respected and qualified to advise. In the end I was given advice from everyone that it was my right to publish and that, as long as I adhered to the General Dental Council’s Social Media Policy here, and also ensured that all details in the blogs were confidential then it was something that could be shared with the profession.
There are accounts of the process of regulation in dentistry from official sources and I don’t feel that there is a problem having accounts of the process from the view of a Dental Practitioner. These are clearly my views alone and do not represent anyone else’s. It is my view of what it felt like going through the process and some background information to frame that discussion.
Please feel free to read and share this, it is important that the profession discusses this, particularly as we head towards a GDC accountability hearing in front of the Health Select Committee in Parliament on 3rd March. Submissions to the Health Select Committee can be made here. It is entirely within your rights to submit submissions, either to comment positively or negatively on the regulatory process in dentistry as you see fit. I would like us to enter into a discussion about this as a profession as a whole. I feel like we should use our opportunity within the statutory framework that has been provided for us to make comment for politicians to be able to make a decision related to the performance of the GDC at an accountability hearing of the Health Select Committee.
To add to this discussion, my own experience of an investigation through the General Dental Council will now be published in full for the next five days following this. I would be delighted if you would like to make comment on this but if the response is anything like the response I had previously then I am really sorry but I won’t be able to get back to everybody individually. Like everybody else I have patients to treat and staff to look after and a family and when I started the process of trying to reply to people individually following the previous blog post it just became overwhelming. I just want to put my account out there for people to discuss and focus attention on this and to see if there is anyone else who would like to make a submission to the Health Select Committee to try and ensure that the outcome of this is entirely balanced and fair.
To finish with this introduction to the second stage of blogs it is important to say that, during my process, consideration was given to my case at an Investigation Committee Hearing and that the Investigation Committee were strong in their judgment and I was delighted that they were able to consider all the papers and submissions appropriately. It may well be that I do not agree entirely with what was said but I was glad that my case wasn’t just pushed forwards to Fitness to Practice without due consideration of the submissions to the committee. That said, the stories I have heard from many practitioners are heart breaking and they are ruining careers. People are considering their positions in dentistry all over the place and their ability to treat patients is being affected by the stress of investigation through the General Dental Council. It is promoting defensive practice on a huge scale and I do not think that is in the interests of patients. It is absolutely essential that patients are protected to the upmost but not at the expense of the profession and this is something we have to get across to the Health Select Committee; to make sure we are able to work in partnership with the regulators and not as outsiders.
The main purpose of the blogs that come from now are just to share with people an experience of someone who has been through the process and to hope that people feel less alone and less isolated when they go through the process as many people in dentistry are suffering the same fate; I can assure you, I have had many messages from many of them.
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