Dental Working Patterns Survey 2022/23 Guidance Notes for Scotland

Your GDC Number is requested at the start of the survey to allow NHS England to link your responses to the dental workforce dataset. This dataset is then shared with HMRC who match this data with tax returns and provide NHS England with aggregated non-identifiable data that is used to create the Dental Earnings and Expenses Estimates publication. The information gathered from the survey provides additional valuable insight into earnings by working hours, business arrangement and time spent on NHS dentistry, which are used by the commissioners of the survey as well as by DDRB.

Primary care dentistry is primary care dental treatment provided outside of hospitals, and includes dentistry provided in independent dental practices and the Public Dental Service, as well as emergency dental services provided as part of NHS Board led arrangements. Primary care dentistry consists of NHS and private work and can occur in more than one practice.

Note that primary care dentistry includes time spent on relevant non-clinical work (which can include administrative and management duties) and can also involve orthodontic work, domiciliary care or dentistry performed on referral.

It does not include secondary care, time spent working for a post-graduate deanery or in dental school.

Include the number of months you worked as a primary care dentist (as defined above); during these months you may have taken holidays, or performed secondary dental care as well. Please note that any extended period of continuous absence of one month or more (for example maternity/sickness leave) should be excluded.

If you were working in a primary care dental practice for 12 months, and also working in a hospital part time for part of the year, you would mark down 12 months in the box provided.

If you worked only 2 days per week as a primary care dentist, but did so for the entire year, you would mark down 12 months in the box provided.

For the purpose of answering this survey, clinical work is defined as all face-to-face contact with patients (including preventative care).

Only include annual leave as time away from dentistry; this does not include time away from dentistry due to extenuating circumstances (such as sickness, maternity leave, compassionate reasons etc.), nor does it include time away for continuing professional development (CPD).

See Annex A for detailed descriptions of each dental type (NHS working arrangement).

Example A

The dentist is an owner of one dental practice, has an arrangement with a NHS Board and provides general dental services within the practice. The dentist also has two other dentists working within the practice in associateship arrangements. This dentist would answer question 6 as shown below. 

The dentist is an owner of one dental practice, has an arrangement with a NHS Board and provides general dental services within the practice. The dentist also provides general dental services in the practice of another dentist (under an associateship arrangement). This dentist would answer question 6 as shown below. Note, if the dentist switched arrangements in the year, becoming a practice owner/director/partner after being an associate only (or vice versa), they would answer in the same way.

The dentist works for their own limited company and has an arrangement with a NHS Board to provide GDS, but they do not own their own practice. Their company provides dentistry for another practice owner/director/partner under an associateship arrangement. The dentist would answer question 6 as below. 

Practice owner/director/partner dentists who have an arrangement or arrangements with a NHS Board to be a practice owner/director/partner and provide dentistry can choose to run their businesses under a number of different methods.

For each arrangement that you have where you were the practice owner/director/partner, please indicate the business arrangement in the table provided.

Associate – Incorporated dentists work for their own body corporate. The dentists and/or body corporate has an arrangement(s) with NHS Board or an associateship arrangement with a practice owner to provide general dental services. Please indicate the business arrangement (Limited Company or Limited Liability Partnership) in the table provided.

See Annex A for a more detailed description of each business arrangement.

Example A

The dentist does not personally hold an arrangement with a NHS Board, but is an owner/director/partner of a limited company, and this limited company holds two contracts, with two separate NHS Boards. This dentist would answer question 7 as below:

The dentist has one arrangement with a NHS Board and is the owner of one dental practice. The dentist is the sole provider of general dental services in this practice. This dentist would answer Question 7 as below:

The dentist has a total of two arrangements with NHS Boards and is the owner of two dental practices. In the first practice, the dentist is the sole provider of general dental services. In the second practice the dentist provides general dental services, but also has associates providing general dental services in the practice. This dentist would answer Question 7 as shown below. Note, if the dentist switched business arrangements within the year, they would answer in the same way.