To CPD or not to CPD

As it's a leap year, it's once again time for the General Dental Council (GDC) to consider revising the profession's approach to continuing professional development (CPD). In a consultation draft being considered by the council, further major changes seem to be on the horizon.

The concept of CPD (or life long learning as it was in earlier guise) is to maintain the safety of patients by ensuring that dentists and dental care professionals are competent and up to date. It recognises that times change, research moves on and so do regulation, legislation and the body of legal case law.

Sir Liam Donaldson as chief medical officer famously compared safety in healthcare to the aviation industry when he noted that the chances of dying in hospital from a medical mistake were one in 300, or 33,000 times more likely than death in a commercial flight.

Observers were quick to point out that pilots have a vested interest in not making mistakes, in that they are irrevocably linked to the fate of their passengers. So far, no proposal has suggested that dental clinicians undergo simulator training (phantom heads) in the same way as aircrew. But many maintain the view that clinical competence is one central thing that dentists (and other surgical personnel) should be reviewed on.