Our Clinical Support Specialist, Lucy Mash, answers the top frequently asked questions about practice compliance, offering valuable insights to help you navigate the different areas of compliance effectively within your practice.
Our PGDs for Chlorhexidine, Dental Local Anaesthetic and Fluorides can be found on your Denplan Dashboard within our quality manuals. They are in the first section under Clinical Governance.
Yes, they can be used. You’ll just need to have them signed off by your area’s NHS commissioner first.
You’ll need to have sizes 0,1,2,3, and 4, in date (yes, they do have a use-by date) and easily accessible.
The IPS audit or similar must be carried out every six months and you should retain each one for two years.
For England and Wales, it is recommended to retain patient records for a minimum of 11 years after treatment ends. For children, records should be kept until their 25th birthday (or 26th if they were 17 when treatment ended).
In Scotland, the recommendation is 10 years for adults and 10 years for children, or until their 25th birthday (or 26th if they were 17 when the treatment ended), whichever is the longest.
In Northern Ireland, the recommendation for record retention is 11 years for adults. For children and young people, it’s until their 25th birthday (or 26th if they were 17 when the treatment ended), or 11 years after the last entry, whichever is longer. If the patient passes away before their 18th birthday, records should be kept for eight years after death.
Up to a maximum retention period of 30 years. If you have any concerns regarding the destruction or removal of records, we recommend that you contact your defence organisation.
You must display the GDC Standards. You must also have all of the names of the staff members who are GDC registered and their GDC numbers. Your complaints policy should be freely available to patients without requiring them to ask for it.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 require that all practices must have Privacy Notices readily available for patients, employees, associates, contractors and job applicants. Each notice should be easy to understand and include an explanation of why you are collecting and using the information, and how long you’ll keep it for. More information and useful templates can be found within the Clinical Governance manual located on the dashboard.
A DBS check should be carried out once an offer of employment has been made and prior to the member of staff starting at the practice. Following this, if the member of staff has worked continuously at the practice for three years and no concerns regarding their behaviour has been raised, a risk assessment should be carried out. A template risk assessment can be found in our Risk Assessment and Audit Manual on your Denplan Dashboard.
Intercollegiate guidance ‘Adult Safeguarding: Roles and Competencies for Health Care Staff’ suggests the following levels of training:
Level 3 is not normally needed for dentists and dental care professionals working in a general dental practice, although staff acting as a safeguarding lead may wish to consider undertaking this level of training.
Safeguarding training should be refreshed every three years and can be done online for Levels 1 and 2. Level 1 training should last a minimum of two hours, and level 2 a minimum of three hours.
A Written Scheme of Examination is a document which you’ll have received when you purchased your compressed air receiver and autoclaves. It outlines how often your equipment needs to be inspected. This document should be referenced in your inspection report to confirm whether the engineer believes the inspection frequency is still appropriate for your machine.