Please find below the GDC Update for February 2021. There is a section with the heading ‘COVID-19 pandemic severely felt by dental technicians’; at the end of this paragraph, there is a link that provides you with an opportunity to raise questions to the GDC in their webinar ‘The impacts of COVID-19 on dentistry’. We would strongly encourage our members to submit a question to the GDC about how COVID has impacted you as a dental professional, and about how you believe COVID-19 has impacted dental labs to such an extent that will have a knock-on effect to the patient, particularly those who seek NHS treatments.
The GDC’s job is to protect the patient, therefore simply asking for help from dental technicians will neither challenge the GDC nor provoke an opportunity for support, but if you are able to link your concerns about your profession to the delivery of dentistry to the patient, then it becomes something that the GDC needs to consider. Below is an example of a submittable question:
COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the number of dental technicians employed at the moment, with current figures suggesting that over 1000 dental technicians are out of work. In order for a dental technician to remain employable, they need to maintain their registration with the GDC, including keeping their CPD up to date. With so many out of work dental technicians having to make the decision of whether to feed their families or maintain their registration status, basic needs come first. If the GDC maintain their current stance of not waiving registration fees and do not become a lot more flexible for the next 2 years with CPD, then many of these out of work dental technicians will not be able to afford to continue their registration. The impact of this will be that after the pandemic, dental practices will not be able to access dental laboratory services as easily as in the past, and when they do there will be a significant wait. This will further increase the risk for those patients in the COVID backlog. What and how are the GDC going to offer a solution to the dental technicians we could lose from the register to avoid further patient anxiety after the pandemic? And, if the GDC do nothing, do they accept that they are failing in their responsibility to protect the patient?
You don’t need your question to be as long or complex as the above, but we do need to make the GDC hear that dental technology needs recognising as the biggest victim to COVID in dentistry, and this is your chance to be heard.