eGDCWe are now consulting on our proposed corporate strategy.
You will find below a summary of our plans to improve how we regulate by supporting and empowering the dental team to deliver safe and effective care, sharing learning and doing it with understanding.
Consultation on our next corporate strategy
Empowering the dental team
Our role includes providing a clear, accessible and forward-looking standards and guidance framework to support professionalism and good decision-making for the benefit of patients and the public.
We plan to develop and deliver standards and guidance in a way that supports professionals to use their judgement free from fear of regulation, and promotes patient safety by focussing on what makes things go right.
We want to further empower the dental team by:
- developing a standards and guidance framework based on the principles of professionalism and public and patient needs and expectations
- recognising and enabling effective use of the range of skills across the whole dental team to deliver safe and effective care
- developing a more agile approach to responding to changes and advances in dentistry, and providing timely guidance to the dental team.
Fostering a culture of learning
We plan to foster a culture of learning as we evolve our approach to regulation. We want to regulate in a way which promotes learning, encourages good practice and supports dental professionals to continuously demonstrate professionalism.
We plan to develop a learning culture by:
- feeding learning into the development of professional guidance on standards, performance and ethics, and maintaining the lifelong learning scheme
- supporting learning and remediation, where possible, in fitness to practise
- using our own research and insight, and working with partners, continuously identify sources of learning to provide insight into areas of practice risk.
Reducing negative health and wellbeing impacts
We know that fitness to practise investigations can negatively impact the health, wellbeing and confidence of dental professionals, so we want to prioritise reducing the negative impacts of regulation by adopting a more empathic approach.
Our research has detailed the impacts the fitness to practise process can have, not only on mental health of participants, but also on patient access and care. By becoming a more effective regulator, we hope to build trust in the process and ultimately achieve better outcomes for patients.
We plan to reduce the negative impacts of fitness to practise by:
- engaging with others to better understand the parts of the process that have the most significant negative impact on mental health and wellbeing
- working collaboratively to change the process, enhance support and reshape the way we engage with participants, including exploring how we might use less adversarial approaches to make the process less punitive
- making sure our teams understand how the process is experienced, and have the tools they need to provide an effective and efficient service.
Respond to the consultation on our next corporate strategy
Find out more about our plans to support the future dental team