A recent report in the press led me to ask, how much more can we all take? We know that doctors and dentists are facing increasing scrutiny and pressure from regulators, governing bodies and the media, and at some stage there must be a breaking point.
The specific report in question related to doctors being required to ‘snoop’ on their colleagues to ensure they are not
prescribing too many antibiotics. We have all heard about the dangers and concerns around the over-prescription of
antibiotics and the inevitable antibiotic resistance crisis, and certainly action is required to counteract the rise in the unnecessary prescription of these medicines. However, to publicly suggest that we should be ‘snooping’ on our colleagues and peers suggests two things; firstly that there are a large number of healthcare professionals who cannot be trusted, and secondly that we now face added pressure and scrutiny from each other in addition to the regulators, governing bodies and press.
It is well documented and often discussed that the professional climate we work in at the moment is an unhappy one, and there is a lot of uncertainty and disharmony with the regulators and governing bodies. The article appeared to be yet another negative piece designed to make doctors and dentists worry about every move they make. Rather than galvanising the profession into action, the effect that this will have will be to encourage the opposite. Doctors and dentists soon won’t feel able to do anything at all because they’ll all be too frightened to do something wrong.
As a profession, we’ve all been up in arms about the GDC and have been made acutely aware that any potentially adverse event can end up in front of a fitness to practice hearing. We therefore become so worried that we work entirely defensively and the only people that stand to win are the lawyers. It doesn’t benefit our patients when we don’t provide a treatment for fear of litigation and so patient care will undoubtedly go into decline.
For example, if a patient presents and is borderline for a particular treatment, you might think, “should I keep an eye on this, or if indicated should I prescribe antibiotics?” In this scenario, it becomes ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. If you choose to prescribe antibiotics and the patient (or a snooping colleague) believes that they didn’t need them, you could have a case against you for inappropriate prescribing. On the other hand if you don’t give the antibiotics, then you haven’t followed a protocol, or you haven’t done something the patient needed and they could become disheartened leading to a breakdown in the relationship.
It’s interesting to note that there is so much negative press in the news towards doctors and dentists, and yet at the same time, a recent report from the NHS, A Summary of the Dental Results from the GP Patient Survey: July to September 2014, showed that the majority of NHS dental patients rate their care as positive.
We hear more about the failures, mistakes and horror stories from the profession than the good news stories – to a certain extent this is to be expected, it’s how the national media works, but who is there standing up for us? Yes, there can be issues in dentistry around pricing and communication, as highlighted by the Which? report, but anything positive seems to get swept under the carpet.
Of course the GDC’s job is to regulate us, not to promote the profession. So who is out there actively promoting the good things about dentistry? Who is supporting better oral health and the excellent, tireless, often thankless work doctors and dentists do?
The national media is all too quick to vilify and denigrate the healthcare professions, when what we really need is a series of good new stories. Perhaps we should all stop and consider something amazing a colleague has accomplished lately; or an instance where someone has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Share this story with your peers and friends and maybe we can all start to spread a little good news.
References available on request.