The General Dental Council (GDC) has announced that changes to the rules for the registration of internationally qualified dental professionals will come into effect on March 9, 2024.

The rules are being introduced following a consultation on routes to registration for internationally qualified dentists and dental care professionals held earlier this year.

Making sure that the dental professionals who join the register meet the GDC’s high standards for safe and effective care is fundamental to the regulator’s public protection role. The same standards for registration are applied to applicants who qualify abroad as those who train in the UK, and those who qualify outside the UK make an important contribution to the UK dental workforce.

Using its new powers to make rules for international registration, the GDC held a public consultation from July 4 to September 26, 2023. The GDC has published’ the outcomes of that consultation.

The new rules provide the basis for the GDC to introduce an ORE application processing fee and to increase examination fees to ensure associated costs are recovered, and fees are allocated fairly. These initial changes mean that the GDC can now take further steps to deliver additional ORE capacity while it modernises its international registration framework.

Rebecca Cooper, associate director of policy and research, said, “These changes ensure that appropriate rules are in place when the current legislation falls away in March 2024. ORE capacity has been limited primarily because we have been unable to fully fund the exam from candidate fees. In line with our consultation proposals, we will soon be setting new fees for the exam, with a view to making it self-funding. We will then procure services for provision of the exam from appropriate providers. Alongside this, we are focusing on longer-term work to develop a comprehensive framework for a modernised process to register dental professionals who qualify overseas.”

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