Today is the 20th anniversary of the first posts by four members of GDPUK, by email.

Yes, that is how we started, unbelievably before Google and Facebook!

I do love telling this story, and I'd like to share it with you. I was online from 1996, in those days it was dial up with those nostalgic modem sounds. The web was much more simple in 1997, and I taught myself, as many of you did, how to write a web page, rudimentary html, including how to upload it and make it display. I was interested in email communication, and before the ease of modern social media, email lists were the best method, using an internet protocol older than the WWW.

I was a member of an American dental group, IDF, which is still going, but it was very US centred, not particularly useful for a UK dentist. In April 1997, I got the idea of founding a mailing list for UK dentists, and thought about how to get a group together. The BDJ was the way forward.

So, I wrote a letter on my word processor software, posted to BDJ that month and carried on with work and my family. This was the pace of life only 20 years ago. Then in June, [only 8 weeks later :) ] I received a postcard [!!] from the editor of BDJ, saying yes, we will publish your letter. So, in the second August magazine, my letter was published, three colleagues replied, and we got started in the September. Here is the Medline link to that letter .... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9293127

I must have the hard copy somewhere, ready for the GDPUK museum!!

We are celebrating the anniversary of GDPUK with our Conference in November. Early bird discounts available here https://www.gdpuk.com/conference/ I am looking forward to an interesting and unique day in Manchester - meeting colleagues old and new... all are welcome.

Looking forward to a celebratory drink with you all at the end of that day… cheers.

Thanks for reading and helping GDPUK grow for 20 years.

Tony

The Mirror recently reported a story as a consumer interest item, about a beautician who paid for training and supplies for a tooth whitening system but then failed to get her money back from the company when she found the practice was illegal. Megawhite continue to trade as suppliers to the beauty salon industry. The Mirror story is benefiting the dental profession in reminding again both the public and the beauticians that whitening teeth is part of dentistry, that is the law, it remains in the domain of the highly regulated dental profession. In this way the public are protected.

But the supplying company continue to advertise, make sales and attend consumer shows, they continue to dupe beauticians into "investing" in training and materials they cannot legally use.  The article goes on to suggest the GDC is getting to grip with this, by writing strong letters to alleged law breaking beauticians. But the wholesaler is quoted as saying "all our customers have had this GDC letter and all ignore it".

Common sense tells us the average beautician, with a salon, or working at their client's premises, does not wish to break the law. They do not want trouble and they certainly do not want to harm their clients. However, it is the suppliers who have vested interests who now need to be brought to task.

The dental profession should not call for the beauty industry and its suppliers to be regulated. However, this news story and the established trade in knowingly selling whitening products for illegal use shows how gullible people can be, and on the other side, it reminds us how persuasive sales tactics can be, particularly when one side of that trade tells blatant untruths to their potential customers.

To conclude this personal view, I do call for Trading Standards and exhibition organisers to clamp down on the activities of the suppliers of illegal whitening materials. Dentists must also ensure they stay well clear of these companies too - don't let your name be sullied by their poor reputation.



Mirror story http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teeth-whitening-dispute-nothing-smile-3210595

Facebook campaigns https://www.facebook.com/StampOutIllegalToothWhitening

Recent news stories:
https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/1512-another-tooth-whitener-prosecuted
https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/1449-fake-dentist-caught-at-excel
https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/1411-beautician-pleads-guilty-in-tooth-whitening-case
https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/1395-whitening-case-concluded-in-court

This period of low interest rates in the UK combined with changes in society and demographics have had some long term effects which are far from coming to roost. Since the financial collapses of 2008, UK Government policies have been to minimize the economic shock; people have been protected by saving the banks from failure and also by continuing low interest rates. 

History tells us that economic policies designed to insulate from short term shock tend to come with a long term consequences. But no-one has thought about a cohort affected more badly by this economic effect, hard working young adults. They have to deal with high property prices and high rents, less secure employment together with rock bottom interest rates if they manage to save, but high interest rates if they have credit card or pay day debts.

Will there be friction between the younger generation whose lives are markedly different from their parents in so many ways? There hasn't been a revolution or even a rebellion, just a combination of changes of circumstance in society at large – greater access to further education, starting careers later on average, starting families later, so many important aspects of life have been shifted by a few years.

One piece of good economic news in the UK, along with growth of the economy, has been the gradual fall in the employment rate in late 2013 and early 2014. However, in UK dentistry, this seems to be in reverse, through unintended consequences, and the combination of many seemingly unaccountable people acting in what they think is the right way, but having a terrible effect on the lives of young dental graduates.

In our dental profession we are now seeing, possibly for the first time in history, unemployment of newly qualified dental professionals. What is now known as the Dental Foundation Training [DF1] scheme, which was commenced as an educational process to help young graduates move to the pressures of working as a trusted professional from those of a dental student. This scheme has now, over many years, become a requirement that dental graduates must complete before they can do any work within the NHS. They have to have a "performer number", obtained by joining then completing this scheme. 

Interestingly, graduates of dentistry from the EU do not have to gain this requirement in order to work in the NHS. However, in the present national foundation dentistry scheme, EU dental graduates have equal standing with UK graduates, and each year some of those from the UK miss out, and cannot work. They may reapply but can only enter the recruitment process twice. After that, if they fail to get through an interview and psychometric assessments, they can have no future career in NHS dentistry EVER.

In the interview process which started in November 2013, with results issued in mid January with no fanfare nor press release, it is estimated [and this is a SHOCKING figure] that more than 10% of UK dental graduates have been left with no employment next summer when they graduate.

What a waste of studying, hours of hard work and sacrifice. Students these days live from loans, those qualifying presently have student debts around £30,000 with potentially no prospect of working in dentistry. Last year, tuition fees rose to £9,000 per annum, so those qualifying soon will have debts of £60,000 or more, yet carry this risk of not having a job when they pass their university examinations and graduate. A further insult is the 18 month rule, where applicants have two chances to apply and go through the process. If then unsuccessful, the artificial rule that bars them from following their career in the UK adds to the injustice.

In addition, this pre-judgment of their chance of a career is insulting and morale sapping, to say the least, before even sitting for their final exams, which seems to relegate those exams, which are the true arbiter of whom is fit to practice, not this FD1 assessment.

Dental colleagues rightly ask where is the British Dental Association in all this? Cannot the dental schools do something – teams of staff there must be angrier than GDPs. And what about COPDEND, who administer this – you must know what is going on? Why can someone take the problem by the horns and change something to benefit UK dental graduates and exclude EU nationals qualifying elsewhere in the EU? Even if you believe there is a risk of breaking an EU law, surely that is better than wrecking the careers and morale of hundreds of young dentists, prejudging the results of their university finals?

The inter-generational friction I referred to earlier might surface in the dental school. Morale must have been affected by this unjust system, university staff must feel that action must be taken for the sake of those they educate. 

This is now the third year of this disastrous situation – something must be done, someone must take responsibility, and make the system fair for UK dental students.

1. COPDEND DF1 Policy statement: http://www.copdend.org/content.aspx?Group=foundation&Page=foundation_policystatement
2. GDPUK forum discussion: https://www.gdpuk.com/forum/gdpuk-forum/vt-national-recruitment-process-opens-9971 [this page requires a GDPUK login]

Food for thought from the Bank of England:

In the week where the UK dental industry was tied up at the NEC, the Chief Economist of the Bank of England gave a question and answer session to the world using the medium of Twitter. It appears he made a good job of it. Some commentators criticised the fact that the answers were standard PR fare, but others realised he did, in fact, release some crucial financial information.

Other companies in the world of high finance feel forced by their regulators to only release critical news via official channels. Twitter does not count as "official".

So did the Bank of England break its own and other regulator's rules? Newspapers were once new, as were radio and TV, the world realised these were tools of communication, and engaged with those media.

Let's turn to the consumer field, where large retail and customer facing companies use Twitter and other social media to enhance their customer service operations. They have teams of people, sometimes responding 24/7, to show that they are giving the best customer service and that they are listening. Ask a few people at Dental Showcase, I did, and they all have a story. "My train was cancelled, I had paid through the nose in advance, and I missed a very important meeting, what will the railway operator do about it?" Or " My heating is broken, we have a small baby, an engineer to fix our heating in seven days time is not good enough".

Do have a look in the social media - those two comments are only a small example of the complaints aired daily, and addressed to the relevant companies. In those cases Virgin Trains and British Gas did reply, and fixed the problems rapidly. The responding company hopes the complainant returns to the same social medium to say how great the service recovery was.

So, back to dentistry.

Dental practices and their teams do face the social media and partake, they take the risk that a complaint may be aired, but they know they must respond to this, and respond seriously.

However, some of the dental industry are scared of GDPUK, on whose website you are reading this blog. GDPUK gives dental professionals a platform to tell their colleagues [and only that limited group]  when they have had great service, and that sort of comment is rewarded by a magnified, greater uptake of that service. I know this is a true fact.

As well as sharing all sorts of news, information, questions and experiences, some dental professionals use GDPUK to tell their colleagues when they feel they have had bad service. Sometimes the complaint is only about what is perceived as poor service. The effect of this can be magnified, in the world of the isolated dental professional, when two or three other fellow professionals appear and confirm they too have had the same less than perfect experience. This is the power of the internet in the modern world, we all know it allows us to rapidly compare prices, compare services, and read reviews. Surely the winning technique for the dental companies, and other small businesses the world over, is to monitor those media, and if a problem occurs, respond in that medium, and try your best to give the best service possible. This could be a winning formula and may lead to positive results, and positive feedback, which in turn will create more sales.

I am convinced the modern companies who adopt this approach will be the winners in the long term. Censorship cannot win, but open-ness will.

Refs:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/10388036/Bank-of-Englands-chief-economist-says-2014-rate-rise-very-unlikely-in-AskBoE-Twitter-chat.htm

Blog image by Gord Fynes, @gordasm. With thanks.