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Yesterday afternoon I was filling out my CPD declaration for the GDC, going through my PDP and making sure that all the ‘dots joined up’.

I was making sure I was compliant with the paperwork.

I was thinking about the paperwork related to the school where I’m a Governor (I have been a Governor at one school or another for 10 years now) and thinking about their paperwork compliance too.

At the recent Governors meeting I signed off an ‘armed intruder policy’. I laughed and laughed inside as I signed the policy off.

It’s not that this is not serious or hasn’t happened before in this country – people should be aware that on one occasion an armed intruder entered a school in Scotland and dealt out carnage – it’s the fact that we have to have a written down policy of things like “do not approach the intruder” “hide under a desk” etc. and if we don’t have that then it affects our OFSTED grading.

I have sat through and even been in charge of orchestrating policy review programmes before and the paperwork is absolutely terrible.

It is, of course, the same at the practice.

A Personal Development Profile is a very good idea in principle and a very good tool for us all to structure and frame our improvement to be better clinical dentists. That is the way in which I approach my PDP and have designed the PDP within my practice.

A 5-year plan to make myself a better clinician, broken down into individual years and then broken down into individual targets. This will then be reviewed from time to time to make sure the targets are being met or scrapped if they’re no longer appropriate.

But it’s only effective if you remove some of the other paperwork that I’m expected to be compliant with to allow me to have the time to do this.

What I’ve seen in the education system for the past 10 years is that the pile of paperwork has got bigger and bigger and bigger.

The pile of policies got greater and greater and greater and the number of people that are available to review, rewrite, sign off and even be in any way enthusiastic about the policies has got smaller and smaller.

PDP is a fantastic blunt instrument with which to strike a dentist over the head with if you think they have been bad (and I have watched evidence of this over the last year) but that does not encourage me or any of the rest of us to complete it with a light heart and a curious mind and to set ourselves a target to be a better dentist and overall a better person.

Dealing with populations of professionals (or any other group of society) like naughty children at a school assembly is one way of approaching this type of problem but it only encourages us to be ‘compliant with the paperwork’

Blog Post Number: 1830