What does 'revalidation' mean?

Dentists already know that it is important to keep their knowledge up-to-date to stay on our register. They do this through carrying out continuing professional development (CPD).

But keeping up-to-date is only one part of being fit to practise. It is also important that dental professionals can show patients that they are competent in their area of practice, and that their behaviour meets the standards needed to stay on our registers. These standards are set out in our guidance Standards for dental professionals. We will require dental professionals to demonstrate that they have met the standards for registration on a regular basis, and so to go through a process of 'revalidating' their registration.

Our Revalidation Working Group is building a model framework for revalidation for all dental professionals. At this stage, it is focussing on dentists who work in a general practice setting (whether in the NHS, privately, or a mixture of both).

As a first step towards a revalidation process for all our registrants, the Group has already enhanced our current compulsory CPD scheme for dentists by recommending that dentists carry out certain activities - CPR training, for example - as part of the five-year CPD cycle. We will launch compulsory CPD for DCPs in 2008. 

This area of the site will be updated regularly as work on the revalidation system develops. Click here to see our latest briefing paper on revalidation.

We will also carry out formal consultations on revalidation as we develop our proposals. We are committed to consulting with our stakeholders both formally and informally throughout the development of revalidation. For example, we held an interactive workshop at the British Dental Association conference in May to seek dental professionals' views on what activities they currently do to maintain their performance, and how existing systems might contribute to revalidation. Click here to see a summary of the ideas dental professionals came up with at the interactive workshop. 

You can keep informed about the development of revalidation by visiting this website, and by reading about it in the dental press. Click here to read an article on revalidation published in Summons magazine.

If you would like to contribute your views on development of the revalidation system, or have any questions, please contact revalidation@gdc-uk.org. or phone us on 020 7887 3819.