Lets talk about it (GDC Shame)

The elephant in the room

After over a year of hearing the same story from every dentist with a GDC case that I have helped its time to lift the lid and start talking about it…..

The story I hear is shame, pain, humiliation and a lack of support for dentists mired in the GDC process.  Some of whom have spent A YEAR OF THEIR LIFE with a case hanging over their head for it then to be heard and be totally quashed.

These dentists are often experienced professionals, some of them have 30 or more complaint free years behind them.  And when the GDC case lands no-one tells them where to seek help.

So this is the start of my campaign to raise awareness to support these dentists.

They need to know there are a bunch of professionals who are trained to assist them.  Right from the beginning. Because the earlier a trained mentor gets on board to assist, the sooner we can put the actions in place to help remediate the problem.

Even indemnity providers, the BDA and  legal teams aren’t telling dentists how to find a mentor to assist them. Which is craziness.

There are a group of people out there who can help.  We are trained to support dentists in difficulty.  We can provide help from the very earliest stages of receiving a complaint or GDC letter to ensure there is a plan in place and the dentist has addressed their PDP, CPD deficiencies and worked on issues raised before the case goes any further.  By doing the right things STRAIGHT AWAY we may be able to stop the registrants having to go through the full GDC process.  Some indemnity companies advise dentists at the earliest stages to find a trained mentor to support them- but many don’t.

One of my dentist clients didn’t know a trained mentor was a good idea until just a few weeks before her Fitness to Practice hearing.  She had legal help for a year up to this point! By then it was too late.

Another client needed to find a workplace supervisor as a result of her GDC conditions, but as a single handed practitioner had no-one to ask at work.  She called every dentist in her local area and no-one could advise or help her. Imagine how humiliated she felt having to describe her GDC issues to her local colleagues.  Even the BDA and her legal team didn’t know how she could find someone to assist her.  She had to close her practice until she found me and I was approved to support her.  We worked together for almost a year until the GDC closed her case.  Had she not found me she would have been unable to work at all.

As you can see I feel very strongly that fellow dentists need to know Dental Mentors are out there.  So do the dental organisations that support them.

We need to let dentists know that they are not alone in this.

A mentor is a strong pair of shoulders and a listening ear, we carry a box of tools to assist you and we are ALWAYS ON YOUR SIDE.

So please share this information with other dental professionals.

We all dread a GDC case.  But we don’t need to go through it alone.

You can find me here  (along with lots of other dental mentors) on the Dental Mentors UK website or find out about mentoring for dentists in difficulty on my website here Let us support you through this. You deserve that.