Your Star Letter in the spring issue of Vital really caught my attention. David Martin asked, ‘Why can't experienced DCPs receive similar training’ …to dental undergraduates? He then went on to state his recommendations for a routine dental examination. He outlined the latter as an ability to read radiographs, recognise and treat periodontal disease and caries.

NICE, on the other hand, has outlined in document CG19 (http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG19) their requirements for an appropriate dental patient examination, which they call the ‘Oral Health Review’. This requires the skill to assess all of the following:

My protocols, as a general dental surgeon, for a dental examination include the following (see boxes 1 and 2, right).

I feel very strongly that a dental examination should include all of the above (as appropriate), not just a ‘gum and decay check’. The course that provides the above skills is a university degree leading to the qualification of Bachelor in Dental Surgery.

Perhaps the ideal way forward is to facilitate fast tracking of willing DCPs (dental care professionals) through a full dental degree. Sadly, even the latter is now considered insufficient to be a fully competent dental practitioner. This is evidenced by the need for vocational training and provisional registration.

In conclusion, as David Martin asked, ‘Why can't experienced DCPs receive similar training’…to dental undergraduates? They can. They are then called ‘dentists’.