Continuing professional development (CPD)
Patients are right to expect that all members of the dental team are keeping their skills and knowledge up to date throughout their careers. We ensure this is happening by making CPD a requirement of all dental professionals’ registration with us.
CPD is any activity which contributes to the professional development of dentists and dental care professionals, with the ultimate aim of benefiting their patients through up to date treatment and care. A CPD activity can be anything from private study time to attending training courses.
When and why CPD was introduced
A dental professional’s primary qualification is only the first step in their education, which lasts throughout their practising life. CPD was introduced to ensure that all dental professionals keep their knowledge current, to encourage the development of new skills in order to benefit the care of patients, and to give patients confidence in the profession as a whole. CPD was made compulsory for dentists in January 2002, and in August 2008 for dental care professionals. A change to legislation was enacted to allow the GDC to include the requirement for compulsory CPD as part of the registration process.
Revalidation
We are also working to introduce a new system called
'revalidation', which will further improve patient safety and encourage high standards in the profession.
CPD review
We are currently at the early stages of reviewing our CPD requirements for registrants. Your early comments are valuable and will help us develop our proposals in a way that enables us to take your experience and ideas into account. Later in the process we plan to hold a formal public consultation on our draft proposals. This is likely to be during 2012.
Please tell us about your CPD experiences by emailing CPDReview@gdc-uk.org.