GDC ‘Terminator’ gets new target in sights

Dental technicians
Luke Barnett comments on the move to make dental technicians require statutory indemnity
Dental technicians will now require statutory indemnity, a move Luke Barnett doesn’t agree with.Just when I thought that they couldn’t get any worse, they did!As of the 1 July 2016, every registered dental technician in the UK will now require statutory indemnity insurance.What the heck is going on?!

Misconduct

For many decades now, dental laboratory work for dentists has been happily signed off by the laboratory as a whole – not an individual technician.To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a case where an individual, employed technician has faced misconduct charges.The laboratory owner is the one that will have any required indemnity and that should protect him/her and the laboratory staff.Everything that a laboratory produces is ultimately the owner’s responsibility.And, dentists obviously have a responsibility not to knowingly fit anything that is substandard.

Expanding regulation

So, why the ever expanding regulation and need for control over the minutiae of the entire dental team’s lives?I’ll tell you why.All of the bureaucrats and desk jockeys at 37 Wimpole Street have to justify their ‘non-jobs’ somehow.This is what happens with the worst of quangos.Normally there is a perfectly good justification for the organisation to exist in the first place.However, over time, and if you’ll pardon the analogy, like Skynet in the Terminator franchise, they become sentient and realise that if they don’t create work for themselves, they will wither and die.

Proportionate regulation

It is this that makes me realise as technicians that we shouldn’t feel singled out – we were just the next plausible revenue stream that could be targeted.There will be others who follow us I am quite sure.Let me make myself perfectly clear – I am not against accountability and regulation.But, it has to be proportionate and with the interests of the public at heart.I am not sure there has been much that has come out of 37 Wimpole Street in the last few years that has been proportionate or in the public interest?Rant over…for now. срочные займы онлайн без справок и поручителей

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