My GDC case and more important matters… part 1 – Friday night

The warm up

Tomorrow morning at 11:00am I will be speaking at The British dental Conference in Manchester, in the big room I think.

I’m not sure how many people will turn up to this, it could be anything from 10 to 1200 but I think I’ll get 10 at least.

I have approached this lecture like an investigative journalist and I have spent way, way more time than I ever should have done on this. It’s a culmination of every thing that has happened since I wrote that blog about my own GDC case early last year. If you’ve not read it the first one is here.

I was approached by the BDA to speak about this and was quite intrigued about the prospect of speaking on the same stage in the same big room that I spoke in two years ago whilst I was in the midst of my GDC case which at that stage I wasn’t brave enough to mention in that room. I learned a lot from that day and I would like to take that in to tomorrow.

It’s worth giving a few spoilers away here though, this will NOT be a rant against the GDC; that will not serve anybody’s purposes and will not reach any resolution. Clearly there will be no resolution reached tomorrow in what, I think we can safely say, is a ‘regulatory crisis’ but I hope that all parties involved in this are beginning to see that the only way forwards is communication and collaboration. That will be the main theme of the lecture.

After the introduction of the lecture and for the first 18 minutes I would like to talk about my case which is what I was instructed to do by the people that booked me. Secondly I would like to point out some difficulties and problems I think exist in the system at the present time from a registrants point of view who has been through a case and thirdly, and most important, I would like to offer some solutions from that same registrants point of view. I realise there might only be 10 people there so if you want to read what I talked about then there will be a series of blogs starting tomorrow. It would be great to receive any comments or have conversations about that but I go on holiday immediately after the lecture tomorrow for a week (not entirely unintentionally) but will pick it all up when I come back.

Worth a few little explanations here though:

I don’t get paid for this lecture and I have no intention of promoting anything else that I do. This is purely about a crisis within the profession that I love and an opportunity to tell the story of what I think solutions might be.

The warm up consists of:

1. Implant surgery on Friday afternoon, mentoring the amazing Beatriz Sanchez in my practice as she becomes one of the best implant surgeons in the country in the next 10 years.
2. The train journey to Manchester where I will do final reading of material to discuss in the lecture and check off the lecture.
3. Travel to Hale or thereabouts to meet up with someone who has become one of my best friends in dentistry over the past few years, Chris Barrow to hopefully talk about things totally and utterly unrelated to the lecture and much more exciting, interesting and game changing.
4. Travel back to the hotel. I decided it was reasonable to allow the BDA to pay for my hotel and train but I did think about not letting them to make it entirely and utterly neutral. I suppose expenses to travel to something I wouldn’t otherwise have been at are reasonable. It’s the Midland Hotel, it’s quite nice and I have stayed there before. It will hopefully be a quite, comfortable night.
5. Running around Manchester early in the morning – essential or else the lecture just won’t be able to happen and a health breakfast (I am trying to be on the healthy stuff now)
6. Quiet place with headphones in to try and get in the right place to stand up and ‘put on a show’ to people.
7. Leave lecture theatre as quickly as possible, exit stage left, train home and holiday.

See you on the other side.

Blog Post Number - 954