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Last Friday, Shaun and I recorded another podcast for Incisive Decisive.

This time it was a two-part podcast to do with the GDC and its ‘Moving Upstream’ project. You can read the recently published document here.

This seems to be a big initiative by the GDC and although I’m not entirely convinced or completely understand what moving upstream actually means, there is clearly an appetite to modernise the way we’re being regulated and to decrease the impact of over-regulation.

The podcast will be released in the next week or two by Shaun as he works hard to get it edited and it will be in two parts because there was so much to talk about.

We found ourselves being quite positive about the whole affair and quite interested in what was being written and the marks that were being drawn in the sand by the GDC for how they plan to move forwards.

It certainly feels like a sea-change and a shift, both in the way they’re talking to the profession and the public as a whole, and also in the way they intend to regulate going forwards.

There needs to be some more meat on the bones here and there needs to be some figures to show what’s happening, but the complaints against registrants as listed in their documentation is a massive reduction from where we were four years ago and reducing year-on-year by the looks of things.

This appears to be a much less threatening environment than the one we were in and, while it still seems to be harsh and the damage of defensive dental practice is still great, if we continue to work together and talk together and learn from mistakes of the past then we might be able to move forward to a better place.

One of the things that Shaun and I discussed several times during the podcast is the need for a robust and strong regulator where underperformance is noticeable and damaging patients and the profession overall. There also needs to be someone who can execute the dishonest as quickly as possible.

The document itself though seems to suggest that it all has to be based around a concept of seriousness and it’s interesting to note that the GDC appear to be collaborating and meeting with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to share ideas on the concept of seriousness.

It’s hard to believe that what is serious to a nurse on Intensive Care is at a similar level to what is serious to a dentist when he’s doing an amalgam filling.

I realise it’s not like me to write something positive about the GDC but I am someone who wants to learn from the bad times and to learn from mistakes and I always appreciate that we can never go back and can only go forwards.

It is a chink of light, like the door is open slightly and as a profession we need to grab this, push the door further and move forwards and let more light in. We need to work together to make the profession a better place and make regulation much more appropriate for the clinical sphere that we work in.

Blog Post Number: 1916