Courses

We are pleased to announce some forthcoming courses on Leadership and Employment Relations through the London Deanery. The Deanery is charging a very reasonable £25 per person. Places are limited. To book, please go to https://www.ewisdom-london.nhs.uk/ and search "Kelly,Paul". The venues are Guy's Hospital and St. George's Hospital.

For all our courses, go to www.milford-uk.com

A job for life?

A thought provoking article here by Stephen Hancocks in the BDJ regarding whether training

dentists should expect a job for life, and what the relevance of entering the NHS is post-training, when the proportion of private to NHS practice is at a high.

I approach this one with my taxpayer hat on. The taxpayer partially funds the training of dentists. What a waste of money if their skills then go to rot! What a waste of human endeavour! The VT system needs to be overhauled for next year as the system has clearly not worked satisfactorily this (academic) year.

Some might say that part of the problem is that we now have too many dentists. I am not so sure about that. Remember, only approximately 50% of adults regularly go to the dentist, and in some of the places I work, I can tell you for sure, caries and periodontal disease are rife. It is more to do with a limited budget for dentistry and the inability of dentists to respond to market forces to deal with demand, removed in 2006.

New course:Visions and Mission Statements -Why? - and what next?

We are happy to announce the latest addition to our website. We are aware that the importance of developing visions and creating mission statements has been taught for many years. However, we believe this to still be of great significance, particularly where change is envisaged. We also believe that it is important that practices are crystal clear about why they are developing these tools and, perhaps more importantly, have an idea of what to do with visions and mission statements once they have got them. If you would like us to deliver this course in your area (or any of the others), then please pester your local postgraduate centre!

http://www.milford-uk.com/Managing-Change24.php

Paul Kelly

Dental Document Finder

It has become increasingly frustrating that policy and regulatory documents are located on different websites. Trying to remember where these documents are located is almost impoissible, and there is only so much that you would want to bookmark. So what I have decided to do is link many (still adding!) of these documents from a single webpage.

This is available here:
http://milford-uk.com/Dental-Document-Finder.php

CQC Disaster

An MP has posted on his website about the Public Accounts Committee's session with the CQC and Cynthia Bowers. I urge you to read his excellent posting which is at

http://stevebarclay.net/?page_id=7

It is clear that concerns over the CQC go much wider than those in the dental profession. Given their disastrous engagement with the dental profession it is difficult to see how they will be able to engage GPs.

Steve Barclay's posting also draws attention to the lack of clinical experience of inspectors. We in dentistry have had this as a big concern right from the start.

Let's hope (but not too soon) for a better future.

GDPC elections

I am pleased to see that I am accompanied by three other candidates up for election to GDPC in my area. The reason this pleases me is that i believe that it is an indication that there is now a greater desire to get involved with dental politics than there may have been in the past.

No matter what the result, I shall continue blogging here on dental issues.

QR code for my main website

Without wanting to overload the page with QR codes, here is another one, this time for my main website. The reason they are appearing here is that you can scan the image with your barcode reader on a smartphone and that will launch your browser to the website which you can then bookmark. Hey presto! The sites are quickly accessible on your phone.
Note Blackberry users may need to download an additional app. I use "QR code scanner pro" (despite the name it is free), which is available from Blackberry apps.