Recently when I was lecturing (virtually) to Trent DFT’s I saw my friend Jason Wong (Deputy CDO) put up a slide that I’ve seen him put up before in the last few years.
It’s basically a timeline and box chart about the future of dentists within the NHS and their potential workforce commitments.
He shows what dentistry is to do and shows what the NHS guys believe they will do in the future.
In essence the dental practitioners job becomes diagnosis and specialist treatments.
Everything else in the middle is carried out by DCP’s.
I know that you would read this and think “It will never happen here” but I’m sad to tell you that it already has.
We know that Orthodontics is effectively run by therapists being overseen by orthodontists and that model can be directly transferred to private digital orthodontics if necessary.
The collection of diagnostic material for implant surgery can easily be carried out by DCP’s and in fact in my experience it’s often better done so.
Similarly, straightforward extractions do not have to be carried out by highly qualified individuals nor the fitting of temporary restorations.
Hygienists are doing an extraordinary job at being Periodontists (but cheaper) and good therapists who have done the Jason Smithson course can do very, very good composites.
But it’s not here that it’s been done before, it’s in medicine.
This exact same plan was implementing in medicine some years ago and now the ANP’s (Advanced Nurse Practitioners) and the Nurse specialists provide well beyond the level of care that senior house officers and junior house officers and even junior registrars used to provide.
Even when I was at Queen’s Medical Centre in 1995 in A&E I had nurse colleagues suturing up faces side-by-side with me (and some were a lot better than I was) were 25 years further on.
My wife is a nurse specialist in paediatrics and the level of care that she gives and the responsibility that she takes was way, way beyond anything that I did as a senior house officer.
The discussion about changing the workforce mix which is now seeming to come back onto the table reminds me of all the discussions in the early 2000’s about primary care trusts and local commissioning and un-ring fencing of financial budgets.
At the time I was involved with the local British Dental Association section and much of the talk was “it will never happen here, it can’t”.
Well it can and it has, and it did and it will.
Really no matter if you’ve only got 5 years left in the profession, but if you have any more than that it’s time to upskill.
Blog Post Number - 2536
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