Regulating CPD

The Cavendish Conference Centre in London was the venue for the recent GDC event ‘CPD in Dentistry: For the Future’. It was aimed at providers of dental CPD and included a discussion on the role of CPD, findings of research into the state of UK dental CPD, as well as a brief overview of the GDC’s proposals for change to the nature of CPD in dentistry.

Evlynne Gilvarry, the GDC’s chief executive and registrar, opened the event explaining that it was designed to continue the dialogue between the regulator and the profession, before introducing the first speaker of the day Andy Friedman.

Andy is the chief executive of the Professional Association Research Network (PARN) as well as a professor of management and economics at the University of Bristol. He began with a brief history of CPD, charting its growth in professional organisations since the 1970s. When discussing CPD there is a clear difference between systems which are input based (like the current GDC CPD requirements) and those which are output based.