A: Most dentists enjoy their careers enormously and are very successful. However, dentistry is not an exact science and we provide healthcare services to the public. Occasionally things don't go as well as we'd hope. It's important that we are indemnified so that our patients can receive compensation if it's necessary and, indeed, the General Dental Council (GDC) insists that we hold indemnity that is appropriate to our practice. All providers of indemnity cover tend to have dento-legal advisers (DLAs) in their teams. DLAs provide advice, assistance and support to dentists and other GDC registrants in responding to claims for compensation, investigations by regulators such as the GDC, and frequently with complaints and dentolegal queries.
A: I fell into dentistry by accident! I didn't know much about it as a teenager but it sounded like an interesting thing to do and, in the absence of any careers advice at all, I ended up successfully applying to dental school. Luckily, dentistry suited me and, once I did find out what it entailed, I enjoyed developing the mixture of academic, practical and communication skills. After a house job, I moved through associateship into practice ownership and, alongside that, became involved in local and then national dental politics. I was, however, really jealous of anyone who had gone into law - why hadn't I thought of doing that? But, once you are committed to dental practice ownership, have patients and staff with whom you have built a good professional relationship, a mortgage, practice loans and a family to support, it's hard to change direction so radically. Yet again, in my own naïve world, I wasn't really aware of the existence of DLAs. I successfully managed my own complaints and somehow avoided the attention of the GDC and litigation solicitors so didn't need to bother my defence organisation. I didn't actually realise that I could have asked for its advice. I was involved in my Local Dental Committee and the BDA and supported colleagues locally with complaints and general dental service investigations. It was only when my children had grown up that I had the time and money to look at whether there were any legal qualifications I could go for and I discovered that medical/dental law was a thing. I enrolled on the iconic Cardiff University Legal Aspects of Medical Practice (LAMP) Masters course just for fun. And it really was fun and just what I needed. Very hard work but something that stretched me in the way I'd been looking for. Then I discovered it was a valuable qualification and it gave me the credentials to become a DLA.
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