Scotland's Oral Health Plan: consultation on the future of oral health

6 A Changing Workforce - Future Priorities

6.1 As the demographic of the Scottish population changes and the dental health of the population continues to improve, the dental workforce will need to adapt. This is an opportune moment to review the primary and secondary care workforce requirements and the training available, to determine whether we have the correct skill mix to ensure we are training people to the appropriate level for the range of roles we need within the dental team.

6.2 Our proposals described earlier around H&SCPs commissioning enhanced services means that we will need to determine the training requirements of potential 'enhanced skill' GDPs in order to deliver such intermediate level dental care.

6.3 Under previous GDC rules DCPs could only carry out certain treatments under prescription from a dentist, meaning that the patient had to initially be seen by a dentist before being treated by any other member of the dental team. The GDC has removed the barriers to direct access to some DCPs, which means that these DCPs can now carry out most treatments, within their scope of practice, without the patient having to first be seen by a dentist. We are currently exploring options for listing DCPs to allow patients to directly access treatment under GDS from them without the requirement to first be seen by a dentist.

Summary of Proposals:

• Dentistry to participate fully in the work to take forward Scottish Ministers' commitment to introduce national and regional workforce planning, with a focus on the full dental team.
• Review our training requirements to ensure we train staff who can meet the care and treatment needs of the Scottish population.
• Ensure training is focused on the setting in which the clinicians will be required to work.
• Ensure that we develop a workforce able to function effectively within the NHS dental system of the future.
• Work with UK partners to determine how best to ensure a steady and timely flow of secondary care consultants and academic clinical staff from the smaller specialties.