The Credentialling Scheme and Register of Certified Dental Practitioners: Recognising Skills Between Generalist and Specialist Practice

Since the General Dental Council ceased registering additional qualifications awarded after December 2007, dentistry in the UK has lacked a formal, national mechanism for recognising practitioners whose capabilities sit between those of the general registrant and the specialist. While NHS commissioning frameworks describe this middle tier as Level 2 complexity care, its application has remained local and inconsistent, potentially leaving patients and referring practitioners reliant on unverified claims of enhanced skills, often shaped by marketing. This article describes the College of General Dentistry’s response. The Certified Practitioner scheme is a national credentialling programme that independently assesses a practitioner’s knowledge, skills and clinical experience against standards agreed with the relevant professional bodies. The article sets out the rationale for credentialling as well as its relationship to the College’s Career Pathways framework and to the specialist lists. The staged assessment process, which encompasses evidence of training, a verified logbook of cases and a peer-reviewed portfolio discussion, leads to five years of certification and entry on a published national register. Written from the author’s perspective as a facilitator of the credentialling workstreams, it reflects on the scheme’s development, the launch of the first credential in endodontics, and the fields of practice that will follow.