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Scope of practice

Proposed revisions to the General Dental Council's Scope of practice guidance

British Dental Journal volume 235, page 117 (2023)Cite this article

Key points

  • The General Dental Council has proposed changes to its 2013 Scope of practice guidance.

  • Dental professionals already have a good understanding of their own scope of practice and there is no indication that the proposed revision of the current guidance will improve individual team members' awareness of the scope of practice of other groups of dental professionals.

  • Ten years on, several barriers to the effective use of skill mix in oral health care remain in place and the proposed revisions to the current Scope of practice guidance are unlikely to solve current problems.

The General Dental Council (GDC) recently proposed changes to its 2013 Scope of practice guidance, moving away from an indicative list of tasks to a more generalised overview, aiming to better support registrants' professional decision-making through personal assessment of their competence, training and indemnity cover in relation to a particular task. The revisions followed a GDC review in 2019, which suggested that misunderstanding exists among dental professionals and other groups in the use of the current guidance, indicating a need for an updated format and modified content to clearly define professional role boundaries. Importantly, the revisions do not change any of the dental professions' scope of practice.1

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References

  1. General Dental Council. Scope of Practice. 2013. Available at https://www.gdc-uk.org/standards-guidance/standards-and-guidance/scope-of-practice (accessed June 2023).

  2. NHS England. Building dental teams: Supporting the use of skill mix in NHS general dental practice - long guidance. 2023. Available at https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/building-dental-teams-supporting-the-use-of-skill-mix-in-nhs-general-dental-practice-long-guidance/ (accessed June 2023).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Non-Executive Director of the British Dental Association, Chair of the BDA Education, Ethics and Dental Team Working Group, United Kingdom

    Laura Cross

Authors
  1. Laura Cross
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Correspondence to Laura Cross.

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Cite this article

Cross, L. Proposed revisions to the General Dental Council's Scope of practice guidance. Br Dent J 235, 117 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-023-6056-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-023-6056-6

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