BDA disappointed

Robert Kinloch, chair of the BDA’s Scottish dental practice committee, said: ‘Continuous registration sends all the wrong signals about the value of patients visiting their dentist regularly. It encourages neglect of personal oral health, undermines modern, preventive approaches to care and devalues the relationship between clinician and patient. It also removes the responsibility of patients to comply with recall intervals advised by their dentist. Scotland already faces unenviable rates of oral cancers. The fear among dentists is that more cases will now go undetected. Having signalled their intention to press ahead with this change, the Government must work very hard to promote regular attendance to patients and ensure that the efforts of the profession in encouraging patients to visit them regularly are not undone. In the short-term, dentists must be provided with the information they need about individuals who have not been seen in practice for the last three years to allow them to make a decision about whether the continued registration of those patients will affect the ability of the practice to care for its regularly-attending patients.’