In November 2023 the General Dental Council (GDC) published ‘The Safe Practitioner: A Framework of behaviours and outcomes for dental professional education’ as the curriculum document for all programmes of undergraduate dental education in the UK from September 2025. The apprenticeship standard for the Dental Hygienist occupation is based on these GDC standards.
The Dental Hygienist Trailblazer Group is therefore pleased to announce that they have opened a consultation for this apprenticeship standard.
To give maximum opportunity for everyone to contribute, this consultation is available as an online survey. This consultation opened on Monday 20th November and will close at 12pm on Friday, 5th January 2024.
The Trailblazer group will analyse the responses received and use them to inform the next draft of the Apprenticeship Standard which will be submitted to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to seek approval. The Trailblazer will also draft the end point assessment plan.
John Darby, Co-Chair of the Dental Hygienist Trailblazer said:
“We are very keen to make this apprenticeship as relevant as possible to the workforce out in practice. We are conscious of the need to attract new clinicians into the field of dental hygiene and hope that this exciting opportunity will reach out to aspiring dental hygienists who have felt unable to engage with a training programme in the past. To this end it is so important for us to get the widest possible feedback to this consultation. Please do feel free to contribute and share your views.”