Dental Protection looks upon a mentoring role as squarely part of one’s professional activity and consequently it falls under the scope of the professional indemnity provided to members. No additional subscriptions are payable by the mentor unless the member has opted for membership in a non-clinical category which excludes any involvement in the treatment of patients (this would not be considered sufficient to provide indemnity for any work carried out in a mentoring capacity). 

Each practitioner has a duty of care to each and every patient in whose treatment they are involved. This duty of care has an ethical as well as a legal dimension and one should start from the premise that such a duty of care exists, even when one is not treating the patient personally – one should not lose sight of the subtle and indirect relationship with any patients involved under the care of the mentee, and in relation to whom the mentor might be providing advice.

You may continue to keep paper records but they will need to be legible to any reader. Changing to computer records will solve the problem of legibility, but you could also consider training your dental nurse to write up the records if you really do wish to continue with record cards.

When referring to clinical records it means records made at the time the patient is treated. Records made contemporaneously will be more accurate, as there is less likelihood of something being forgotten or incorrectly recalled.

If made at the time of treatment, there is no risk that the records can be influenced by subsequent events, such as the patient making a complaint to the receptionist after treatment has been completed. Dental Protection interprets the time of treatment as the period whilst the patient is seated in the dental chair for a consultation, as well as when specific treatment is being provided.

Records made at the end of a session, or at the end of the day, are not considered to be contemporaneous. Working in a busy practice is not an acceptable reason for a delay in writing the records.

Several brokers and agents offer insurance policies that are backed by Lloyds. This is acceptable but attention should be paid to the €5,000 excess on each claim. 

You might want to consider the best way of ensuring how a patient would receive the full amount of any award if a claim should ever arise. Perhaps you should ask the associate to deposit €5,000 in a trust account as a contingency measure. 

You might also want to consider why this dentist is not with one of the usual defence organisations. It is not inconceivable that the associate has had conditions applied or had possibly been refused by a previous provider.

Although every dentist is responsible for their own acts and omissions, if the associate subsequently leaves the practice it is possible that any complaint about a former associate may become the vicarious responsibility of the practice. In this situation the associate will need to purchase ‘tail-cover’ from the insurer to indemnify against any cases that may come to light after they have left your practice.

Most claims arise some years after the treatment was provided. Unless the associate has access to occurrence-based indemnity, which is provided by your Dental Protection membership, the practice owner will need to protect themselves against any vicarious liability by ensuring that suitable arrangements have been put in place for any period that the associate will be working for you.