We sit down with Yash, Dentolegal Consultant at Dental Protection South Africa, to hear about his role supporting members.

As a Dentolegal Consultant what does your role involve?

I’ve been at Dental Protection for five years now. I help members when they have medical or dental queries – if they need advice, have a complaint, or just want to pick my brains about something. Day-to-day I can be writing letters, speaking with members on the phone, meeting with attorneys, and so on. Sometimes I am the bridge between the clinical and non-clinical professionals. I also attend external events such as conferences to speak and meet members, write articles, and work on our risk prevention content. 

What inspired you to work in a dentolegal role?

I got into medicolegal/dentolegal work by accident. When finishing high school, I wanted to work in law, but the market was very saturated at the time and my father, also working in law, suggested I pursue something else. I went on to become a dentist but in my community service year felt it wasn’t the right career for me. I enrolled remotely into school and studied law part-time while practising as a dentist, with the intention of becoming a patent attorney. My first role at a big law firm I was placed in a department handling general insurance litigation work, representing doctors, dentists, and hospitals. When I saw a role at Medical Protection Society, of which Dental Protection is a part, I knew it was the right move. I discovered my niche, the perfect mix of my old and new career, and I feel a real part of the dental community still. 

What’s been the best experience working at Dental Protection?

The best experience is to be recognised in the medical and dental communities as someone to be relied on. Every now and again I am in a group chat or get word that someone has mentioned my name as someone to talk to and get advice, it makes me feel good to get that feedback and give back to the profession in a positive way. 

From your experience, what opportunities or challenges are there for members in South Africa?

Recently the regulator has recognised the importance of multi-disciplinary collaboration in oral health. They seem to be adapting their rules around this. I see it as a big opportunity for all dental professionals, Dental Protection, and even our medical members, to work together for the better of the patient. 

Patients are incredibly well informed; they have access to a wealth of knowledge and often expect multidisciplinary care now. That creates a challenge in itself, but also an opportunity to work across different specialties and teams. 

From your perspective, how does Dental Protection support its members?

Whenever I present to members, I say to them that the beauty of my role as a Dentolegal Consultant is that I am not business development. I don’t have KPIs to try to sell to them, my main concern is that they are protected, and they have this in place. I say that any protection for their professional work is important, but I can hand on heart say that I recommend Dental Protection to my family, friends, and colleagues. I can do this because there are some key differences that stand out to me about Dental Protection. 

Firstly, we are doctors and dentists ourselves, there for our doctors and dentists. We know the pressures that our members face from first-hand experience and understand it. 

Secondly, everyone at Dental Protection truly cares and we are proactive. If we see something is going to fall into a claim or see a vulnerability, we try to resolve it at the local level, before it escalates, it’s not just about money for us. For example, when a member is waiting for summons, it could take years – years of sleepless nights, stress, and so on – all while a patient has the potential to go on social media and make complaints about the care. We don’t take a strictly legalistic approach here and can take a practical, personable approach to help the member throughout the waiting time before the summons. This to me is why we stand out and why I can honestly recommend Dental Protection. 

Is there anything else you would like to share with our members?

Members sometimes hesitate to contact us because they think asking for assistance might make their costs go up, this is not the case. You can email us and call us to ask for advice without it necessarily impacting costs. We always look for a reason to help as opposed to not. 

I would also say that members should contact us at the earliest possible stage, there are often so many options to resolve issues right at the beginning before they escalate into larger concerns. We see a lot of requests from members regarding online negative reviews, but often there are several stages that happened before this where we could reduce the risk of a complaint appearing online.

What are the most common types of cases you are asked to review or give advice on?

It’s good that in my career I’ve had the opportunity to work on both the medical and dental side, I can compare and contrast the two. I do think it’s day and night. For dental it is almost always complaints. Often stemming from a patient’s expectations exceeding what was delivered and that wasn’t communicated. Most complaints that I see whittle down to communication and expectation management. Often many think patients want to sue for money but I don’t see this, it’s more about their expectations not being met and work not being communicated clearly with them. 

Have you noticed any trends in dental negligence claims in South Africa in recent years?

Touching on what I said earlier, despite what people often think, dental claims are usually quite few, they start as a dispute, can develop into an expression of dissatisfaction and then the patient gets so frustrated that they aren’t getting answers they resort to other means, like social media or via the HPCSA, or both. There are so many opportunities to resolve this at an early stage, I would just flag to contact us as soon as possible to support. 

I have also noticed that the quality of writing in complaints had made a significant shift since AI became openly available. Some patient complaints include issues that even doctors or lawyers wouldn’t think to include within the complaint, AI is clearly being used to generate some of this.