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I am walking to collect my daughter from her swimming club, it’s Tuesday night, it’s warm and I’m speaking on my Air Pod headphones with the dog in front of me to one of my long-term friends in dentistry.

This individual that I’m talking to is one of the best clinical and ethical clinicians I’ve ever met in dentistry.

They would always be in my top 5.

We have known each other (and periodically worked together) for 10 years.

We’re on the phone talking about their current GDC case.

It’s a single complaint going back to about 9 years ago. It’s based around periodontal disease, consent and assessment. The patient came from another practitioner who was having difficulty looking after and assisting.

I’m talking to my friend on the telephone because the case has gone to Interim Orders Committee (IOC).

Interim Orders is a fast track way of pulling practitioners in who have a complaint against them to see whether they have to be stopped from working as soon as possible.

It’s designed for really dangerous people who could be physically damaging patients on a day to day basis.

If you’ve been practicing for 10 years, go back and see whether you think there might be one of those cases in your book where the notes aren’t perfect or they have been passed on by someone else and you’ve had to pick up the pieces.

You know there will be and more than one at that.

The prospect of being called in front of an IOC is utterly devastating even for a terrible practitioner who doesn’t care, let alone someone who has dedicated their life to the profession and to the patients they serve.

If the GDC pull you in to an IOC they had better shut you down because the damage they have caused in getting you there is disproportionate and terrible.

My friends IOC case hasn’t come up yet as I write this, but they will not be shut down, they will have been through an IOC hearing with a relatively meaningless sanction as they pass on into the FTP system.

If you cannot process FTP cases quickly enough to ‘protect the public’ do not use an IOC system to patch over the failings in the system that you’re responsible for.

Back to the same old same old issue.

In taking my friend to IOC how much ‘protecting of the public’ do you think they’re actually providing?

To crucify someone who may have failed to cross a T or dot an I 9 years ago might make you think that you have done a good thing but to potentially push one of the best practitioners I have ever met out, forcing them to give up dentistry where they should have remained for 20-25 years, that is damaging the public, in my opinion.

My friend is irreplaceable in dentistry, who is protecting them?

Blog post number: 1646