BDIA highlights potential issues with GDC’s latest CPD proposals

The British Dental Industry Association (BDIA) has responded to the General Dental Council's (GDC's) consultation on planned changes to the continuous professional development (CPD) system.

Concerns have been raised about certain parts of the GDC's overall plan, which involves the elimination of unverifiable CPD hours and the introduction of a requirement for a minimum of 100 verifiable CPD hours for dentists.

Issues raised by the BDIA included problems with the focus of learning requirements being on maintaining or achieving certain standards rather than improving them, while it was also felt that requirements for the retention of documentary evidence of CPD were too prescriptive and could stifle technological developments, such as electronic validation.

The organisation also voiced its concerns that the GDC consultation document itself was overly simplistic.

According to the BDIA, the document "reduced a range of complex and important issues to a series of 'yes', 'no' and 'don't know' options, without providing an adequate platform for respondents to submit detailed, point-by-point responses".

Despite this, the GDC recently noted that on the whole, respondents to its consultation have been broadly supportive of its planned CPD reforms.