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.