At a conference last week, BDA Chief Executive Peter Ward told Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt that dentists don't feel trusted and they feel subject to oppressive regulation; they feel they are bullied by systems. He said: “All health professionals want to deliver high quality results, but sometimes the blockages in the system are those that prevent them doing it.”

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Read more: Peter Ward warns Jeremy Hunt on dentists’ low morale

Fizan Tahir, who bought equipment on eBay, was censured by a recent GDC hearing concerning the use of counterfeit dental devices. This highlighted the dangers to both patient and professional registration from using counterfeit and non-compliant devices. He was put on conditions, which included carrying out an equipment audit every three months in all his practices.

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Read more: Dentist censured by GDC for using counterfeit equipment

Manchester Evening News has reported that hundreds of patients have been left out of pocket after Pure Clinic, based in Manchester closed. Many customers were angry and frustrated that work hasn’t been done at all or was only partially completed. Many had paid £1,095 for its ‘six month smile’ deal. Others paid for whitening and other cosmetic dental work. One is reported to have paid £15,000 but no work has been done.

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Read more: Manchester clinic closes leaving patients in the lurch

The BDA has celebrated the final ratification of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, with confirmation that individual nations can work to gradually scale down the use of dental amalgam. BDA Chair Mick Armstrong said: “This is a triumph for common sense and BDA lobbying based on a considerable weight of sound research and science.”

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Read more: Common sense at last on amalgam - BDA

Dental website, for UK dentists and their teams, GDPUK.com had a record month in January 2016 with 44,492 unique visitors who made 153,880 visits to the site.  This surpassed GDPUK's previous record of 39,304 uniques and 139k total visitors in December 2014.

During January, GDPUK's Twitter followers also reached a significant milestone, passing 5,000. Follow us @GDPUKcom

GDPUK forum also hit new milestones during rainy January, see below, when the Forum went past 20,000 topics created. 

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Read more: Record visitors for GDPUK site