Introduction
This morning in Manchester I spoke to The British Dental Conference for the second time in my career, two years after my initial talk on problems in implant dentistry.
When I spoke at the initial lecture two years ago I was in the midst of a GDC investigation and I was not brave enough to talk about it on that stage. Today I was invited back to talk about that GDC investigation and how I wrote about it in 2015 following the culmination at the end of the an Investigation Committee hearing where I was provided with two lines of advice to change my professional practice.
Since that time I have investigated and paid attention to GDC matters far, far more than I ever would or should have done. It has taken up time that would have been used to develop my business, my professional practice, my amateur life as a poorly performing athlete and more importantly my time as a Father and a Husband but it has been worth it to get my head around where the system is and where the problems are.
I have had huge opportunity to speak to many people, some at very high level within dentistry in the UK, about the issues and problems and have been able to formulate an opinion. The only thing I did today on stage was to out that opinion. The only thing I do in the next seven blog posts related to that lecture is to summarise things that people might not have heard in the lecture or to give other people a chance to hear what I spoke about in part. This is my opinion, it is not the opinion of the British Dental Association or anybody else. It’s one man’s view of where we are and trying to offer a solution; you might love it, you might hate it, you might take me to court or try and put me through the GDC but surely after all I am entitled to my opinion after what I have been through and the work I have put in.
As said in ‘Wear Sunscreen’ by Baz Luhrmann “I will dispense that advice now…”
The lecture today was in three parts:
The remaining blogs in this series will talk about individual elements of the lecture and what I talked about and why. The most important thing though is to know that following the case I was involved in and accused and having been accused in the initial charges of:
I feel it is very important to point out that to a practitioner like me, it felt like the equivalent to an accusation of rape.
I could describe at length and in detail what happened to me when I read that for the first time in my living room where I sat on the carpet with my back against the wall and how my world collapsed.
In the end a very strong response from and Investigating Committee could not understand why those charges had been brought and stated that there was no evidence whatsoever for them being brought but that was too little, too late and the psychological damage had been done.
My purpose in the lecture today was not to hang people up or hang people out to dry, this will never lead to solutions. The purpose really is to say that the best people to care and look after the interested of patients are dentists and if dentists are frozen out of the process of looking after patients then patients will be harmed in the end, that was what I wanted to get across, that was the point. I hope I did but others will be the judge of that. The rest of the lecture contents of any significance or things that I wanted to talk about are coming up in the blog, I hope you feel it’s worthwhile reading on.
Blog Post Number - 955
If you would like to read the previous posts in this blog series they are below: