The Future of Dentistry?

When you think about how you define general dental practice, what comes to mind? You might think about our commitment as dental professionals to the wellbeing of our patients, the daily treatments and advice we give, or the central role our practice teams play in local communities. Alternatively, as a dental professional experiencing the last 12 months or more, you might be tempted to think about growing patient backlogs, difficulties in patients being able to access dental care, burdensome and often opaque guidance from regulators, or practices being excluded from government decisions that impact them.

As Clinical Director at Denplan, I know that many of our member dental practices will hold many of these thoughts and concerns simultaneously after the year UK dentistry has experienced due to COVID-19. But what the pandemic has done is expose the myriad of issues facing general dental practice – issues created by the pandemic and a great many that predated COVID-19 and its fallout. While as a profession we have been well aware of the issues, importantly some of the problems are gaining wider acknowledgement by the public and policy makers.