Training Blog

One idea that seems to be frequently cropping up especially with the current economic climate is that dentists should have a limit on the amount of private work they can do. This is due to the privatisation of alot of dental clinics; it is argued that the limit on the amount of private work they can do was justified as it cost the NHS £175,000 to train a dentist.

However there was opposition from dental leaders who said that they were against the idea of quotas, pointing out that there were dentists who wanted to do more NHS work but could not. Since the privatisation of many dental practices patients continue to struggle to find NHS practices with capacity to take them. The figures show that there are one million fewer patients actually using NHS services now, compared with when the arrangement started. The opposition pointed out that the majority of dentists’ income is evenly split between private and public patients, but there are signs that younger dentists are more likely to turn their backs on the health service.

Some people argue that it is the credit crunch that is to blame for dentists going private as on average private patients pay more for treatments whereas the NHS allocate a fixed amount of money to each practice which you would of thought would be better for dentists as it is a guaranteed amount, also the NHS pays for their training but it would seem that there must be a reason that they choose to stay private.