Cat Edney reinterprets the picture of new GDC working patterns data and what it means for dental care professionals (DCPs).
The GDC has released its latest dataset on DCP working patterns (October 2025), offering a snapshot of how dental hygienists and therapists say they are practising across the UK. On the surface, it looks straightforward: who’s working, where they’re working, and what their primary field is.
But a closer look reveals something unexpected and even, rather confusing: 57.7% of those dental therapists who answered said they work as dental therapists. However, 29.8% of dental hygienists that answered also stated that they work as dental therapists.
A notable proportion of clinicians who selected ‘dental hygienist’ as their registration category also reported that their primary field of practice is dental therapy.
This sounds positive at first – perhaps more clinicians are working to full scope than we thought. But is that what the data is really showing? I’m not convinced.
What does the data really show?
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