The recent consultation on reform of the General Medical Council (GMC) has promoted debate over the protection of titles in medicine and dentistry.
The consultation proposed that the title ‘surgeon’ would be protected in the new legislation. In our response, we made clear that the title ‘surgeon’ is also used - entirely legitimately - in dentistry, such as ‘dental surgeon’ or ‘oral surgeon’. Its protection in any GMC legislation would need to ensure that legitimate usage by dentists was able to continue.
In response to the consultation, the BMA are calling for a wider range of titles to be protected. These are:
- Consultant
- Registrar
- Resident
- Medical practitioner
- General practitioner
- General medical practitioner
- Registered medical practitioner
- Medical professional
- Registered medical professional
- Bachelor of Medicine.
While most of these are of no concern to dentists, the first three titles are, of course, rightly used by hospital dentists. There are thousands of dentists working as consultants, registrars and residents, who are employed on the same contracts as the hospital doctors that the BMA represents.
Where do we go from here?
The BMA does not intend to prevent dentists from appropriately using these titles. We were aware of their suggestion of additional titles for protection in their consultation response, and we made clear to the Government as part of our own response that it would need to ensure that any other titles given protection would not inadvertently affect titles used by dental registrants.
Dental colleagues have been understandably concerned that we consistently speak out about the protection of titles relevant to us, and I hope that this reassures them. This consultation will not be the end of this process and we will continue to highlight this issue as GMC reform progresses.