Mentoring: are you being or doing? That is the question.

Mentoring is finally coming into its own. The signs are good: the General Dental Council thinks it's important; the British Dental Association thinks it's important; and the royal colleges, Health Education England and local dental committees have all stated that they support mentoring and mentors as beneficial and important. Confidence levels are rising that mentoring is something all dental professionals would benefit from. In this piece I would like to encourage all dental professionals not to view mentoring as something that needs to be an 'add on' or something extra but something that is intrinsic to what and who we are. If we can move away from 'doing' mentoring to 'being' mentors, we will all gain and all aspects of our professional life can be enriched.

How to respond to a complaint positively - good practice.

This article gives an overview of complaints, what they are, the underlying reasons why patients make complaints and gives some guidance on how to respond well to complaints. The ethical perspective of complaints is considered, in particular, that patients have a right to make a complaint if they are unsatisfied by the care and treatment they receive from dental professionals. As professionals we have a duty to respect that right and respond appropriately. A short case example is included to demonstrate the use of reflective learning and reflective models to help maximise the learning from complaints. Complaints are valuable feedback and the essence of quality improvement for dental practices and dental professionals; they are a natural part of patient engagement.

Addressing underperformance in the United Kingdom NHS dental system and its possible implications for other care systems.

OBJECTIVE: To outline the rationale for, background to and role of the National Clinical Assessment Service (NCAS) in helping improve the quality of care provided through the NHS dental care system and identify possible lessons for international dental care delivery systems. DESCRIPTION: Due to shortcomings in the provision of healthcare and changes in societal attitudes towards healthcare professionals new arrangements for ensuring the quality of care are evolving. The performance of individual practitioners is increasingly being challenged as new regulatory mechanisms for the delivery of care evolve. Historically, regulatory bodies have had few options to handle poor performance and this will need to change: one such approach is the development of an agency to help identify the rationale for poor performance and, most importantly, develop solutions to address them. SUMMARY: The creation of NCAS has provided a mechanism through which shortcomings in dental practitioners' performance can be addressed in a systematic and more appropriate manner than has previously existed. The approach used has applicability for helping improve the quality of care within all oral health care systems.

A review of community dental service provision for children attending special day schools.

OBJECTIVE: To review current practices used to screen children attending special day and mainstream schools by the Community Dental Service (CDS) nationally and document the provision of care to children attending special day schools. BASIC RESEARCH DESIGN: The investigation used postal questionnaires requesting information relating to two types of special day schools. PARTICIPANTS: All CDS managers within the United Kingdom. RESULTS: Special day schools continue to remain priority schools for the CDS as two thirds of districts reported screening these schools more frequently than their mainstream schools. The majority of districts provide dental care to children at special day schools from fixed clinic locations with a minority using mobile dental units to provide dental care (40%). CONCLUSIONS; The continued integration of children with special needs into mainstream schools rather than their segregation into special schools will make the identification of this priority group more difficult for the CDS. The service should explore new methods of identifying these children rather than continuing to rely on the traditional methods of targeting establishments.