A leadership situation

Recent news headlines have been dominated by 'leadership issues'. In early February, three 'leaders' were stripped of their status one way or another – all in the space of three eventful days. The leader formerly known as Sir Fred was stripped of his knighthood; a footballer was stripped of his captaincy of the national team, and allegations of perverting the course of justice resulted in a cabinet minister driving away (slowly) from his cabinet post.

It would seem an appropriate time to look at where the 'leaders' are in the dental profession, and it is difficult to know where to start because there are so many of them – in fact, they are all over the place (double entendre intentional). At Government level, there is the Chief Dental Officer and his deputy working hard to maintain a political trajectory, our professional association and trade union has at its helm a recently re-elected captain and the undergraduate and postgraduate dental deans responsible for educating tomorrow's workforce. At the cluster primary care trust level, there are clinical leads, non-clinical leads, managerial leads, talk of lead providers, lead nurses and so on and on the ground at practice level, we have decontamination leads, information governance leads, dentists who lead on CQC, ICT leads – to name but a few.