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I am writing this Comment shortly after the UK General Election, the results of which flew in the face of all the pre-election polls. There were a lot of losers and winners but, as I watched the television coverage of a well-known politician who had lost his seat, I began to wonder if this happened because he had not been doing the ‘day job’ of looking after his constituents because of too much other work. The newspaper coverage, when writing about Scotland, mentioned ‘out of touch Labour’.
I had similar thoughts when attending the British Dental Association Annual Conference in Manchester when I came across the General Dental Council (GDC) exhibition stand. Aha, I thought, the hierarchy are here to interact with their public (ie dentists) by showing the acceptable and friendly face of the GDC and put right the adverse, badly-handled publicity which has befallen that organization in the past year. It certainly represented a wonderful chance for the Chairman and Chief Executive to interact with dentists, explore the ways in which the GDC and the profession could work better together, but they were absent. I did not spot any of the Council members there, but I may be wrong, as I do not know them all by face. But, a three line whip (in parliamentary terms at least) should have been in place so that the Council members could also show a desire to interact with their public. Furthermore, all the top people from the Protection Societies/Associations were represented at the meeting, not to mention all the BDA hierarchy: this would have presented another valuable forum for meetings with all of those whose members have to deal with the vagaries of the GDC's processes on a daily basis. In addition, a high proportion of the conference delegates were young dentists in their FD1 year – what better opportunity for the Chairman and Council members to speak with the future of the profession? But they were not there. They might argue that the cost of travel to Manchester was not something that they wanted to inflict on the profession which pays all their income, but any such travel costs must surely pale into insignificance when one looks at the cost of the exhibition stand and space. An opportunity missed.
I apologise to non-UK readers of Dental Update for the political tone of the Comment and Guest Comment, but we are working in times when our regulator has come under serious criticism from the highest places. However, there is much excellent material for everyone in Martin Kelleher's article, no matter where you are. In addition, I am confident that you will find much clinical material which is relevant to your everyday practice in the remainder of this issue, and I bring your attention to the superb paper on Minimally Invasive Dentistry, something to which we should all subscribe. The excellent Pain series continues with a lengthy article which I had considered splitting into two parts, but, having read it through several times, I felt that its message might be lost if the paper was divided and was confident that our clever and thinking readership (which goes without saying as you are subscribers to Dental Update) would be able to follow the thread of the article to its conclusion.
Hopefully, our absent regulators will see fit to appear before their public before it is too late. I write this advisedly, as a former Board member of the Dental Practice Board, many years ago, in its time a much-maligned organization. Some Board members, myself included, and the Chairman plus some senior members of staff, started doing the rounds of exhibitions and meetings in an effort to show the helpful face of the organization. I felt that we, collectively, turned our image around. Perhaps it is time for the GDC to do the same. Being absent from major meetings could be considered to demonstrate a negative (some might say contemptuous) lack of empathy with their constituents.