Quality Management

The Scotland Deanery Dental Directorate is responsible for ensuring the quality management of postgraduate Dental education and training to the standards set by the General Dental Council (GDC).

The Dental Directorate also work in partnership with the three Scottish Dental Schools, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Glasgow, to support final year undergraduate students undertaking placements and experiential learning at Dental Outreach centres across Scotland.

The General Dental Council: Sets standards for ensuring that dentists are trained to an appropriately high level. It is the Regulator for undergraduate and postgraduate dental education in the UK.

The Scottish Government: Facilitates and supports the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate dental education in Scotland. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is directly accountable to the Scottish Government as are all NHS Scotland Health Boards.

Health Boards in Scotland: Deliver the training, either in hospitals or general practice surgeries. Dentists in training enter a programme and rotate through a number of hospitals or practices to make sure they get a wide range of experience in their chosen specialty. They have to cover a curriculum that is approved by the GDC before completing their training.

The Dental Directorate of NES quality manage the training delivered by the Boards on behalf of the GDC to make sure it is delivered to the correct standards and covers the curriculum for the specialty. This is done by receiving regular reports and feedback from the trainees and the Boards themselves, and by a programme of visits and virtual reviews to ensure that the Boards are providing the time and resources to the trainees to get the best training.

There are 14 territorial Boards in Scotland, the majority of whom support postgraduate dental trainees.

This page was last updated on: 02.05.2024 at 12.31