Use of honorific 'Dr'

The request was successful.

Dear General Dental Council,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:

Policy documents, general advice, practices or regulations concerning the use of the honorific 'Dr' by dentists who do not have earned medical or Ph.D. qualifications.

I would also be interested in any GDC cases concerning the misuse of this title.

Thanks.

Yours faithfully,

Joe Turner

Freedom of Information Requests, General Dental Council

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Jenny Watts (020 7887 3819), General Dental Council

Dear Mr Turner,

I am writing in response to your email of 22 July and your request for
information under FOI. I have various attachments to send you, but
unfortunately your mail box is not accepting them, even when I have tried
to only send a few at a time. Could you either provide me with another
email address with a larger storage capacity or provide me with your
postal address.

Yours sincerely

Jenny Watts

Standards Manager

General Dental Council

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7887 3819

Mobile: +44 (0) 7540 711 864

Email: [1][email address]

Web: [2]www.gdc-uk.org

GDC | Protecting patients, regulating the dental team

If you have received this email in error please read on:

The material transmitted in this email and attachments is intended only
for the person or organisation to whom it is addressed and may contain
confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient, or the message contains information relating to a third party
apparently included in error, please do not review, re transmit, share,
disclose, print, store or take any action in reliance on its contents in
any way whatsoever.

If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender on
telephone number 020 7887 3800, delete the material from any computer
and destroy any copies made, alternatively email
mailto:[email address]

Communications transmitted over the Internet are not always secure. The
process of transmission may have infected the message and its contents
with a computer virus or other malware. The General Dental Council will
not accept any responsibility whatsoever for damage caused to the
recipient's computer systems when the message or contents are opened.

SUPPLIERS: For important changes to the General Dental Council*s
ordering arrangements, please consult the suppliers page on the GDC
website at this address -
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Partner+organisati...

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]
2. http://www.gdc-uk.org/

Dear Jenny Watts,

I am contacting the people who run whatdotheyknow.com and will get back to you asap.

Yours sincerely,

Joe Turner

Jenny Watts (020 7887 3819), General Dental Council

13 Attachments

Dear Mr Turner,

I write in response to your email to the Council of 22 July requesting
information on the title of `Dr' under the Freedom of Information Act and
I have divided my response up to reflect the various items you requested.
Due to the large size of the attachments I have also had to send you two
separate emails and this is the first:

1. Regulations

We issue ethical guidance entitled Standards for Dental Professionals
which can be found here on our website:

[1]http://www.gdc-uk.org/Current+registrant...

As the covering explanation on this page states, our guidance documents
are not lists of rules you should and shouldn't do but they are principles
and values that we expect our registrants to bear in mind at all times. We
do not issue specific `regulations' so we are unable to provide these.

2. Practices

I am unclear as to what you are requesting here and would be grateful if
you could clarify your request.

3. General advice

In 1995 a decision was made by Council that the use of the title `Dr' was
not an issue of serious professional misconduct and we would no longer
pursue the matter through our fitness to practise procedures. That policy
decision still stands and we allow dentists to use the title of `Dr' as a
courtesy title if they do not have a PhD or a medical qualification
provided that they do so in a way which is not misleading. This is the
advice that we give to any individual who asks whether we permit the use
of the title of `Dr'. This decision is captured in a revision to the
guidance that was in existence at that time and I have attached a copy of
that document.

4. GDC cases

Information on recent cases considered by our Practice Committees can be
found here:

[2]http://www.gdc-uk.org/General+public/Fit...

5. Policy documents

We have been considering whether it would be appropriate to change our
stance on the use of the title of `Dr' and I have attached various
documents which illustrate the decisions that have been taken to date:

a. A paper on the use of titles which was considered by
the Standards Committee on 17 February 2009.

b. The minutes from the meeting of the Standards
Committee on 17 February 2009.

c. A paper on the use of titles that was considered by
the Education Committee on 23 April 2009.

d. The minutes from the Education Committee meeting on
23 April 2009.

e. The minutes from the Standards Committee meeting on
18 May 2009.

f. A paper on additional qualifications and
advertising with 3 annexes which was considered by the Council's Standards
Committee on 27 January 2010.

g. The minutes from the 27 January 2010 meeting

h. A paper on ethical advertising which was considered
by the Standards Committee on 28 April 2010.

i. The minutes from the 28 April 2010 meeting.

j. The paper that was considered by Council on 18 May
2010.

k. The minutes from that Council meeting.

We are currently running a consultation entitled `Ethical Advertising' and
you can find a copy of the draft guidance here:

[3]http://www.gdc-uk.org/News+publications+...

If this is a topic that is of particular interest to you then I would urge
you to respond to our consultation as you will see that one of the
questions is specifically on the use of the title `Dr'.

I trust this is of assistance.

Yours sincerely

Jenny Watts

Standards Manager

General Dental Council

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7887 3819

Mobile: +44 (0) 7540 711 864

Email: [4][email address]

Web: [5]www.gdc-uk.org

GDC | Protecting patients, regulating the dental team

If you have received this email in error please read on:

The material transmitted in this email and attachments is intended only
for the person or organisation to whom it is addressed and may contain
confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient, or the message contains information relating to a third party
apparently included in error, please do not review, re transmit, share,
disclose, print, store or take any action in reliance on its contents in
any way whatsoever.

If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender on
telephone number 020 7887 3800, delete the material from any computer
and destroy any copies made, alternatively email
mailto:[email address]

Communications transmitted over the Internet are not always secure. The
process of transmission may have infected the message and its contents
with a computer virus or other malware. The General Dental Council will
not accept any responsibility whatsoever for damage caused to the
recipient's computer systems when the message or contents are opened.

SUPPLIERS: For important changes to the General Dental Council*s
ordering arrangements, please consult the suppliers page on the GDC
website at this address -
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Partner+organisati...

References

Visible links
1. http://www.gdc-uk.org/Current+registrant...
2. http://www.gdc-uk.org/General+public/Fit...
3. http://www.gdc-uk.org/News+publications+...
4. mailto:[email address]
5. http://www.gdc-uk.org/

Jenny Watts (020 7887 3819), General Dental Council

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Turner,

Please find attached the last two attachments.

Yours sincerely

Jenny Watts

Standards Manager

General Dental Council

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7887 3819

Mobile: +44 (0) 7540 711 864

Email: [1][email address]

Web: [2]www.gdc-uk.org

GDC | Protecting patients, regulating the dental team

If you have received this email in error please read on:

The material transmitted in this email and attachments is intended only
for the person or organisation to whom it is addressed and may contain
confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient, or the message contains information relating to a third party
apparently included in error, please do not review, re transmit, share,
disclose, print, store or take any action in reliance on its contents in
any way whatsoever.

If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender on
telephone number 020 7887 3800, delete the material from any computer
and destroy any copies made, alternatively email
mailto:[email address]

Communications transmitted over the Internet are not always secure. The
process of transmission may have infected the message and its contents
with a computer virus or other malware. The General Dental Council will
not accept any responsibility whatsoever for damage caused to the
recipient's computer systems when the message or contents are opened.

SUPPLIERS: For important changes to the General Dental Council*s
ordering arrangements, please consult the suppliers page on the GDC
website at this address -
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Partner+organisati...

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]
2. http://www.gdc-uk.org/

Dear Jenny Watts,

Thank you for your efforts to answer my FOI request, which is much more detailed than I expected and answers all the questions I was attempting to answer. I will certainly be contributing to a public consultation.

Yours sincerely,

Joe Turner

Jenny Watts (020 7887 3819), General Dental Council

Thank you for your email.

I am now out of the office until Thursday 29 July 2010.

If your query is urgent you may wish to contact my colleague Tom Peplow on
020 7887 3853 or at [email address], otherwise I will respond to your
email when I am back in the office.

If this is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act,
please redirect your request to [General Dental Council request email].

Jenny Watts
Standards Manager
General Dental Council

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7009 2775
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7009 2751
Email: [email address]
Web: www.gdc-uk.org

GDC | Protecting patients, regulating the dental team

If you have received this email in error please read on:

The material transmitted in this email and attachments is intended only
for the person or organisation to whom it is addressed and may contain
confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient, or the message contains information relating to a third party
apparently included in error, please do not review, re transmit, share,
disclose, print, store or take any action in reliance on its contents in
any way whatsoever.

If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender on
telephone number 020 7887 3800, delete the material from any computer
and destroy any copies made, alternatively email
mailto:[email address]

Communications transmitted over the Internet are not always secure. The
process of transmission may have infected the message and its contents
with a computer virus or other malware. The General Dental Council will
not accept any responsibility whatsoever for damage caused to the
recipient's computer systems when the message or contents are opened.

SUPPLIERS: For important changes to the General Dental Council*s
ordering arrangements, please consult the suppliers page on the GDC
website at this address -
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Partner+organisati...