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Star Letter

I am delighted to inform all your readers they should look out for the new CD-ROM-based learning programme, DNART (Dental Nurse Access to Registration Training), which will be delivered to all dental practices in September (see page 23). It is a top-up training programme designed to enable all dental nurses who have the equivalent of two years full-time chair-side experience to get on to the new GDC Register for PCDs when it opens next year. A tutor version will also be available.

But what is the future for dental nurses and indeed for all PCD education and development? The NVQ is being reviewed right now as it is accepted that it is too cumbersome and paper intensive – look out for the new structure next year, and let us know your thoughts. The National Examining Board for Dental Nurses national exam is a more academic qualification, but it is also looking to re-invent itself next year.

From next year (apart from in the Armed Forces) there will be no standalone dental hygiene course – it will be part of dental therapy training, and moves are afoot to encourage dental hygienists to undertake top-up training to become dental therapists. Is the role of the dental hygienist about to die?

Training courses are being created and new qualifications devised for Clinical Dental Technicians and for Orthodontic Therapists – two new groups of PCDs who will both be treating patients.

So who will provide the oral hygiene and dietary advice to patients – will we find that the dental therapist is "overqualified" for this role in the new NHS? If we are not training dental hygienists, then perhaps there is room for the dental nurse post-qualification certificates to be further expanded and developed to fulfil this role. Could this new role include polishing teeth and even supra-gingival scaling, leaving the "real perio" to the dental therapist?

And who will pay for all the training for PCDs? Dentistry always seems to be an anomaly, not wholly within the NHS, and with many of its qualifications not in the National Education Framework, so that neither the Department of Health nor the Department for Education and Skills want to pay for them! One of my roles is as lead Postgraduate Dental Dean for PCDs, and the Deaneries are all being encouraged to become involved in CPD (and basic training) for PCDs – but with no identified funding. DNART has been produced by my Deanery on behalf of the Committee of Postgraduate Dental Deans and Directors and funded by the Department of Health, England – but what now?

I congratulate you on an excellent, informative publication and would be very pleased to hear what your readers feel, either directly or through the pages of Vital.

SEND YOUR LETTERS to: the Editor, Vital Magazine, BDJ, Nature Publishing Group, 4-6 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW or email vitaleditorial@nature.com. Authors must sign the letter, which may be edited for reasons of space.

Our star letter writer will receive a collection of the latest Colgate Oral Health Professional products (£100 RRP) courtesy of Colgate.