The dental profession’s new CPD regime

From the beginning of January, for all dentists, a PDP will be essential. For those of you who aren’t dentists, this is part of our Continuing Professional Development (CPD), the ongoing training we must all undertake un order to stay on the General Dental Council’s register. From January, it will be known as Enhanced CPD (ECPD) and we will use the PDP to plan the courses we want to undertake as well as the associated learning outcomes. The PDP will gradually include a log of completed activity, including date, number of hours and the learning outcomes covered. We will also use it to store the CPD certificate for each activity.

Generally the aim appears to be to promote high quality CPD and to encourage us to spread our training out evenly across a five year cycle. The PDP is a key aspect of the overhaul of CPD but there are other aspects too, including:

• No more non-verifiable CPD – reducing the overall amount of CPD we need to complete

• When paying the annual retention fee (ARF) which enables us to stay on the GDC register, we must make a declaration of the CPD hours we have completed in that year.

• During the five-year cycle, we will need to complete 100 hours of verifiable CPD, with 75 hours for hygienists, dental therapists, clinical dental technicians and orthodontic therapists and 50 hours for dental nurses and dental technicians.

• All dentists will move to the new scheme on 1 January 2018 and all dental care professionals on 1 August 2018.

• The transitional arrangements are explained and a calculation tool is available on the GDC website.

To my mind, it seems like a positive move to encourage us as a profession to reflect on the skills and knowledge we want to acquire and to plan for it. And for orthodontists wanting to develop their lingual skills, I am happy to say that I offer an in-depth course which will sit very nicely in their PDP! More information on my course here.