The impact of General Dental Council registration and continuing professional development on UK dental care professionals: (2) dental technicians

Abstract

Objective To investigate the impact of General Dental Council (GDC) registration and mandatory CPD on dental technicians' views, job satisfaction and intention to leave the profession.Design Postal/online survey, conducted in parallel with a survey of dental nurses.Setting UK private and NHS practices, community services, dental hospitals.Subjects and methods Representative sample of GDC registrants. Main outcome measures: job satisfaction; intention to leave profession (dependent variable in regression analysis).Results 605 were sampled: 40 were ineligible (left the register in July 2011, re-qualified in another dental care profession, shared a practice address with another selected DT); 193 responded (response rate 34%). 22% were female (mean age 38.2 years) and 78% male (mean age 49.4 years). The general principle of registration was endorsed by 52%, and compulsory registration by 54%, but the fee level by only 13%. Most technicians felt that registration had had either no effect or a negative effect on their view of their career (80%), role (78%) or status within the dental team (85%), and 66% did not agree that training helped them to do their job better. Fifty-one percent were not satisfied with their job and 20% intended to leave the profession. Intention to leave was predicted by greater dissatisfaction with remuneration.Conclusions Criticisms regarding the cost and relevance of registration and the cost, relevance and accessibility of CPD, coupled with potentially high level of attrition from the profession, suggest a review of the fee and salary structure and greater support for CPD is warranted. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.