Patients need to have confidence that the professionals providing their dental care have not only shown that they are up to standard when they first join our registers, but can show that they remain up to standard over the course of their working lives. Dental professionals will do this by revalidating their registration on a regular basis.

Revalidation will build on the current requirement for dental professionals to show that they keep their knowledge up-to-date by carrying out continuing professional development (CPD).

We are currently running pilots of a framework for revalidation for all dental professionals. At this stage, the pilots are focusing on dentists who work in a general practice setting (whether in the NHS, privately, or a mixture of both).

We ran a consultation on revalidation, which was updated on 01 June 2009, so please take a look and let us know what you think. It includes a summary of our proposals, the draft standards framework against which dental professionals will revalidate their registration, and diagrams showing how the system might work.

Download our open consultation (pdf, 134 Kb).

This phase of consultation closed on 9 September 2009, once we have analysed the responses we will publish the findings of this stage in the development of revalidation.  A consultation on the new proposals that come out of the work carried out this year, will be published at the beginning of 2010.  This is your opportunity to have your say on what revalidation should look like.