Working Outside the VT Contract

Dental Protection strongly supports Vocational Training, which enables a recently qualified dentist to enter practice in a controlled and sheltered environment, with the invaluable benefit of a structured programme of further training, alongside the support of an experienced Vocational Trainer. The Vocational Dental Practitioner (VDP) works as an Assistant, i.e. an employee of the Vocational Trainer and has the combined benefit of tutorials, day study courses and regular contact with the trainer.

For this reason Dental Protection offers greatly reduced (and subsidised) subscriptions for dentists who undertake Vocational Training, not only during the VT (or GPT) year(s), but also in the two subsequent years for those undertaking Vocational Training immediately upon graduation. This recognises the value that Dental Protection places upon the experience of VT and GPT.

The VDP Contract, which has been nationally agreed, limits to 35 hours a week the number of hours to be worked by VDPs. After 3 months VDPs can also participate in a practice emergency rota. The primary objective of limiting the number of hours worked is to ensure that VDPs are allowed time to develop their dental skills in a controlled and supervised environment without the additional pressures that dental practice can bring, and without inviting problems as a result of unnecessary stress and fatigue.

It is recognised that some VDPs choose to work outside their VDP Contract, sometimes by carrying out extra emergency sessions or working on a sessional basis for other practices. The current VDP Contract allows for such extra work, provided that its nature and extent has been specifically agreed by the trainer, and the Postgraduate Dental Dean has been notified.

Any VDP who chooses to undertake such work outside their formal VDP appointment needs to be fully aware of their ethical and legal obligations under that Contract. If in doubt, advice should be sought from Dental Protection.

On the strict understanding that any such work outside the VDP appointment has been agreed under the terms of the Contract between the VDP and the Vocational Trainer, Dental Protection would see this as falling within the scope of membership at the appropriate Dental Vocational Training subscription grade, and no additional subscription would be payable for this extra work.

The appropriate grade would remain DVT for VT undertaken in the first year following graduation, and VT2/VT3/VTX respectively for VT which is undertaken in the second, third or subsequent years following graduation.

However, any additional work carried out contrary to the terms of the VT contract, cannot be indemnified within a subsidised VT grade (DVT, VT2, VT3, VTX) and the member would need to transfer to a non-VT grade (D1U, D2U, D3U, DFU) in which higher subscriptions would become payable, depending upon the number of years since graduation. Members are reminded that it is a GDC requirement to protect patients by maintaining appropriate professional indemnity for all clinical practice.

Issued 5 October 2004

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