Featured in this report: Regulation, Medical & healthcare
Dentists who are not on the lists must not call themselves specialists or use titles which may imply specialist status, such as orthodontist and periodontist. However, non-specialists can still practise aspects of specialist disciplines, as long as they are trained and competent to do so. Conversely, specialists are not limited to practising only in their specialty and can undertake general dentistry, for example.
DJS Research was commissioned to carry out research to help answer the fundamental question of whether the General Dental Council should regulate the specialties at all, and to consider three key questions:
To help answer these questions, the research examined: patients’ expectations of specialist dentists and the regulation of specialties generally; what sort of information patients need to make informed decisions about their care; to what extent patients wish to make decisions about work which their usual dentist would not carry out; and whether the specialist lists are useful in assisting patients to make choices (including which dentists to use) for more complex treatments.
Read more about this project in the research case study.
