Dental Whistleblowing Is Down, But…
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- Published: Monday, 17 October 2022 07:53
- Written by Chris Tapper
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The number of whistleblowing disclosures made to the General Dental Council about dental registrants has fallen markedly since 2021.
The healthcare professional regulators Whistleblowing disclosures report 2022 showed that between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022, the GDC received 61 disclosures from whistleblowers.
This number was down from the 100 disclosures revealed in the 2021 report.
In the report, the GDC said “The number of disclosures we received decreased from 93 (sic) in the previous period to 61 this year.”
“This reduction was partly due to the lower number of concerns we received relating to the pandemic, such as allegations of not using PPE, poor cross infection procedures and not adhering to social distancing rules.”
“This we believe, could be a result of the improved guidance and information that was available to both dental professionals and patients.”
But the figures still show that in comparison to the size of other healthcare professional registers, the GDC still receives a higher number of whistleblowing disclosures than other healthcare regulators.
The GDC says it has around 114,000 registrants in total on the register – 43,000 dentists and 71,000 dental care professionals.
By comparison, the General Medical Council has in excess of 300,000 doctors registered, yet the report shows it received only 62 whistleblowing disclosures, compared to the 61 received by the GDC, with a much smaller number of registrants.
The GDC said “Compared to some other regulators we have received a higher number of disclosures in comparison to the size of the register.”
“It is worth noting that most dentistry is provided in a primary care setting and outside the more robust clinical governance frameworks that characterise some other forms of healthcare.”
“This may mean that alternative disclosure routes are less present in dentistry, and a larger proportion are dealt with by the regulator.”
The GDC said it took regulatory action on all 61 of the 61 disclosures it received.
The GDC said “Of the 61 cases where regulatory action was taken, 35 were received from dental professionals, seven from the public and 19 were anonymous.”
The General Optical Council, which has over 33,000 registrants revealed it had only ten disclosures of information sent to its Fitness to Practise team. Just three progressed to formal investigation.
Despite having 758,000 registrants, the Nursing and Midwifery Council received only 152 disclosures in 2021-22.
In 2018, the GDC received disclosure from 61 whistleblowers, rising to 75 in 2019.
The number rose to 75 in 2019 and then shot up to 116 in 2020.
Since the report of 2021, which recorded 100 whistleblowing disclosures to the GDC, the number has receded to the latest figure of 61 – the same number as recorded in the first published report in 2018.
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