Are the days of being ‘just a GDP’ numbered?
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 27th September 2019
Recently qualified dentist, CHARLOTTE GENTRY, looks at the role of the GDP.
Throughout university we had a number of career talks from dentists who have different roles within the profession and from different professional bodies regarding where the future of dentistry is headed, and how to ensure we gain the best careers we can.
Many of my friends and I had pictured the rest of our lives a little stereotypically – working in a small rural practice seeing the same families of patients for many years. However, it seems that dentistry won’t be like this for much longer.
The pressure on new graduates seems to be significant with expectations such as completing our MFDS straight away and considering Dental Core Trainee jobs for after foundation training, in order to specialise. It seems that being a ‘normal’ dentist just isn’t an option anymore and that we will fall behind in the ‘slow lane’ if this is the path we choose.
From my understanding it sounds as though dentistry will have different levels within primary care in order to reduce the workload on secondary care and make access more available for patients needing complex care. This may mean a GDP specialising in oral surgery or periodontology, for example. This could absolutely be a really good way to allocate resources and utilise different skills in order to give patients the best possible care. However, there are some questions surrounding it.
For those who have been qualified a long time and are the ‘normal’ general dentist – where does this leave them and how do they get into a tier/level in order to treat these more complex cases? I had an interesting conversation with a member of staff about her concerns over this. She explained how she found that experience seems to mean nothing now when applying for jobs and it comes down to how many things you have in your portfolio which scores you the points. She found this frustrating; newly graduated dentists were often getting positions and those with 20+ years experience were losing out. If the profession is heading this way – where you need to specialise, have extra qualifications and an extensive portfolio – then it needs to be ensured that every member of the profession is suitably equipped for this change. We as new graduates have spent our very small amount of experience in dentistry reflecting, building portfolios and becoming educated on how the profession is changing. It is important that those who have been in the profession longer have sufficient education in this too to ensure we are all on a level playing field.
Another issue I foresee with tiered/levelled dentistry is the impact it would have on the NHS contract. How would a structure like this work within NHS dentistry? Specialist work would be very difficult to do in the existing contract within primary care and I wonder how much this has been considered in the new contract.
As health needs change and the world modernises, I absolutely respect that dentistry needs to evolve with the times and that this new structure may work really well for dentistry in the UK. I just hope that it does.
