New equality, diversity and inclusion section of the GDC website

Supporting our efforts to be a trusted and effective regulator we have brought together details of our work on promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. We aim to demonstrate how inclusion supports the delivery of safe and effective care, public confidence and professionalism.

Our new Equality, diversity and inclusion  section of our website provides clear, relevant and accessible data and information, alongside the actions we are taking to reduce inequalities and ensure our regulatory processes are fair. It also provides guidance and signposting on practical issues such as requesting reasonable adjustments, governance arrangements and easy read publications.

The new webpages include:

• Inclusive patient care: Ensuring dental professionals are equipped to understand and respond to the needs of a diverse patient population.
• Inclusive education: Building equality, diversity and inclusion into dental education and training standards, including cultural awareness, recognising barriers and challenging discrimination.
• Fair regulation: Using data, research, audits and quality assurance to identify and reduce potential bias or disproportionality in regulatory decisions.
• Professional behaviour: Making clear that discrimination and sexual misconduct are unacceptable, and that professionals have responsibilities to speak up when others are at risk if it is safe to do so.
• Engagement and influence: Working with professional bodies, educators, unions, indemnifiers, employers and groups representing different communities to influence EDI outcomes.
• GDC as an employer: Improving the diversity of our own workforce and independent decision-makers, our data, governance and organisational culture.

We wanted to provide a little advanced notice to stakeholders who represent dental professionals, before we share the details and links to these new webpages with registrants and our wider stakeholders next week. We welcome any feedback  you might have, including suggestions for improvement.

Please get in touch if you have any comments or questions.