New Years resolution

In the past, certainly up until 10 years ago, being a competent practitioner was enough to build a successful practice, earn a good living and be sufficiently professionally challenged to make day-to-day dentistry relatively interesting.

But rather a lot has changed in the past decade, and in retrospect I think we can pinpoint 2009 as the starting point for a number of seismic events that coincided to create a very different dental landscape from the one that existed at the turn of the century.

In January 2009 the UK slipped (officially) into recession for the first time for almost 20 years. In June 2009 Jimmy Steele’s review of NHS dental services in England was published, and finally in December 2009 HTM01-05 guidance was issued. These three events combined during a 12-month period to make UK dentistry a very different proposition from anything that had gone before.

This recession is arguably the first that has really hit the dental profession, and we have all heard anecdotal stories about increasing FTA (failure to attend) rates, reduction in recall effectiveness and gaping white spaces in appointment books.