Anthony Haycroft successfully defends a dentist before a Professional Conduct Committee of the General Dental Council
5th July 2021
Anthony Haycroft successfully defended a dentist before a Professional Conduct Committee of the General Dental Council. The dentist incorrectly extracted an adult upper tooth from a child and so failed to gain consent. He was due to extract 3 deciduous (baby) and 2 lower adult teeth at the request of an orthodontist. He said his original plan was to perform the extractions over two appointments but did them in a single appointment because he said he was pressurised to do so by the child’s mother and during the extractions she kept distracting him in trying to look inside the mouth. The error occurred in a short period of time.
The mother’s account was at complete odds being that she wanted two appointments but the dentist insisted on a single appointment only, failed to explain anything at all to her and failed to check what the orthodontist requested and changed his story about what went wrong. As a result of the alleged change of story he was accused of not only a lack of candour but dishonesty.
The dentist was supported in his account by his dental nurse and the PCC accepted the dentist’s admissions as regards incorrectly extracting the tooth without consent but found not proven a number of other allegations including dishonesty which were based upon the mother’s account.
The defence accepted misconduct and the PCC found no impairment on public interest or public protection grounds based upon the defence evidence and submissions.
The case concluded with no action being taken at all upon the dentist’s registration.
Anthony Haycroft was instructed by Ediri Okonedo and Sue N’jie of the Dental Defence Union.
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