A view from the Chair: trusted and effective; measuring outcomes; future dental team

Trusted and effective

I managed to spend time with everyone in the GDC this month, when we brought teams together to talk about what our strategy means to us. Our vision is to be a trusted and effective regulator, supporting dental professionals to provide safe and effective care for their patients. We heard from dental professionals who agreed to be filmed talking about what we need to do to be trusted and effective.

We heard that we are moving in the right direction and that supportive regulation is key. And also that we need to collaborate with partners and have a continuous improvement culture, focused on improving our systems and processes.

This is fair feedback. Our vision is a description of where we want to be, and we know that there is much to do to get there. Some of this will be down to good, old-fashioned delivery, doing what we said we would. Teams have spent time making sure that our day-to-day priorities moves us forwards and that everyone understands their contribution to delivering our commitments. 

It’s also important that we are guided by our values, to be inclusive, respectful, transparent and purposeful. There’s an expression that what happens inside an organisation is reflected outside. We also recognised where our people and teams are demonstrating our values, because this then translates into you experiencing these too.

What does good look like?

For each of the five objectives in our strategy, we have identified goals and the impact on equality, diversity and inclusion. Being transparent about progress towards these goals is important and some of this comes through monitoring and evaluation of progress and performance. 

We also want to be able to measure and demonstrate the outcome of our work in a way that shows the impact on dental professionals, patients and the public. Some of our goals will take time, and we want to be sure that we are on the right trajectory to make a difference, and able to learn and refine as we go. We’re spending time thinking this through in more detail, so that we can be transparent about what we are doing and how well it is working. 

The future dental team

Every year, around 8,500 students take up places in the UK to train to become dental professionals.  Making sure that students feel prepared for practise is vital, and the education, training and supervision they receive is hugely important to building their confidence.

At the weekend our Chief Executive, Tom Whiting, was delighted to join Jason Wong, Chief Dental Officer for England, at the British Dental Students’ Association (BDSA) Conference in Liverpool.

They held a joint session focused on addressing the ‘fear’ culture in dentistry and how students can best prepare to join a regulated profession for the first time. Jason talked about wellbeing and the role of professional standards, systems and processes that support quality, safe, effective care for patients. And Tom explained how regulation exists to protect both patients and professionals and how we are addressing the climate of fear through improvements we’re making to fitness to practise.

Regulation isn’t about trying to catch people out. It’s about setting standards, ensuring everyone is meeting those standards, helping people to meet those standards and working together in a fair and proportionate way when things aren’t right. Dental students and trainees shouldn’t graduate fearful of regulation. I’m pleased that we were able to join around 900 students at the conference to have this important conversation.