Chief Dental Officer's Dental Organisations Roundtable

DTA President Delroy Reeves will be attending the Chief Dental Officer's Dental Organisations roundtable session to raise important issues on behalf of Dental Technologists. The session will provide a unique opportunity to discuss issues facing the profession and open channels for collaboration between us all.

To help make the most of the time they'd have together they are asking each organisation to tell them the single most important policy facing their membership currently.

The DTA will be raising the following:

• The lack of promotional material available for UK individuals to see that Dental Technology is a great career with a range of hands on through to computer aided work.

• That often the educational providers are not supported nationally to be able to offer their courses.

• The role and training opportunities for dental technicians has been left to the marketplace and thus there are now very few providers across the UK. For Scotland the only provider who is based in Aberdeen; and in Northern Ireland the intake is around 4 trainees a year which does not meet NI employer's needs.

• The need for in Laboratory Apprenticeship schemes with lots of hands-on training, combined with learning theory work with current available Dental Technology schools so, that students can get a qualification that would be suitable for GDC registration

• The changes to UK registration of overseas trained dental technicians following Brexit seems to have reduced the applications considerably.

• Overall, with an ageing dental technology profession and the lack of training places there is a growing concern that there is insufficient dental technicians being trained and there does not appear to be any major plans within the nations to address this vital role in oral health care.