Is, is there any element of direct access came in in 2013.
I was still relatively new at the dentist magazine at that point and.
I was swept up thinking this is going to, this is going to change dentistry entirely,
and then. I, I admitted I'm not working in therapy or,
or hygiene, but it seemed the, the actuality seemed rather underwhelming compared to what
the promise was, um.
First of all, why is that and is that, has that been a frustration for you at the ADT?
Yeah, so, I mean, So the GDC has always been our gatekeeper and then they've allowed us to
do what what what we can do so in terms of scope of practise,
and they've always said that we had to work from a prescription,
that in order to see a hygienist or a therapist you needed to see a dentist first,
and they lifted that.
And that was amazing because, you know, it, it was like,
wow, general dental counsellor said we could go out and do what we wanted to do.
And then it was like, yes, and it was almost like reaching the pinnacle and then just
falling off the edge because all of a sudden we realised it's not just the GDC's NHS rules and
regulations.
It's the human medicines regulations.
It was IRA.
You know, it was a whole host of things that they all said,
well, yeah, the GDC says you can do it, but our rules say you can't open a course of treatment.
Our rules say you can't.
You know, supply and administered prescription only medicines.
And then, you know, Irma and some radiographers felt that we were,
although we could, you know, justify, operate, but we couldn't report on radiographs.
Um, so there was all of those things that, that sort of came in as a big slap to us.
It's like somebody's sort of giving you a glass of champagne and then cutting it off and it all
falls out the bottom.
Um, so then we started to think, right, well, we've got to do something about this.
And of course we had to learn.
You know, it wasn't something that we were particularly aware of as a,
as a profession, you know, because we hadn't been able to do it before.
So it was, it was like it was a bit like, well, we can drive a car,
but we hadn't had to read the Highway Code and all of a sudden we were gonna have to read the
highway code and you know.
Performers list regulations are not, are not simple.
They're not easy English, and you know, we're not in control of them and same as human
medicine. So we had to sort of work our way to find our
way around that.
And, um, you know, I think Michaela and I both started to look at that back in 2013 to try and
look at it, and we both had been working in our own little ways to understand.
And then we went to, um, I mean, I'd been talking to Barry Cockcroft at the time,
and I think Michaela had and.
Um, you know, we'd all been trying to work our way around it,
and then we came to a meeting that was held, um, and we were both sat at the meeting and we were
like, oh my God, this is massive, and, oh my God, we're both working,
doing the same thing, so let's try and get together and work it between us.
And I think once we, we kind of joined up together and started thinking about it,
so, you know, some bits I could get my head around, some bits she could get her head around
and then by the time. You know, it became a sounding board for each
other, and I think that's when we really started to make some traction.
We didn't really think it was gonna take this long.