For more than a decade, Rafael Roldán Villalobos is in charge of the presidency of the Official College of Dentists of Córdoba. The professional takes a tour of the current situation of the profession. He also contributes his vision of the issues fundamentals of sector and details the function of the school and the status of the oral healthof the Cordobans.
- Currently, what difficulties does the profession face?
Broadly speaking, the same things are being repeated issues for years, basically, because efficient measures have not been adopted to solve them. For example, we continue to worry a lot about the impact it has on the oral healththat there is no clear and forceful legislation that regulates the health advertising. The law that we are proposing from our General Council aims to ensure that all commercial communications related to health are accurate and truthful to guarantee the patient safety. That is, health advertising must be exclusively informative and not encourage consumption. We offer health services, not mere consumer products. Dentists are health professionals and our primary function is to prevent oral diseases and, if necessary, practice the treatment most appropriate to the patient pathology: Advertising is legal, but always from a health perspective.
“We continue to fight for a reform of the Professional Companies Law.”
Very much in tune with the above, we continue fighting for a reform of the Law of Professional Companieswhich is what provides that Professional Associations can sanction deontologically those companies that carry out activities for which the compulsory membershipwhile contemplating measures to ensure that business control of the companies in the sector left in the hands of collegiate professionals. Heschool, as a Public Law Corporation, does not enter into assessments of business models. Our role is to defend ethical dentistry based on scientific evidence and providing the best patient assistancebut we must ensure that there are no legal loopholes that allow access to the Commercial Registry of authentic professional companies as if they were intermediation companies that are outside the scope of application of said law.
Whitening, aligners, splints… online scams worry dentists a lot
Another scourge in our profession for years is the intrusion. Only dentists are qualified by law to carry out the set of dental activities. prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the mouth, teeth and jaws (without this standard posing a limit to the powers and powers that maxillofacial surgeons have). However, we continue to receive complaints from patients who report that their oral treatment It has been carried out by a person who is neither legally nor scientifically qualified to do so.
We are deeply concerned about professional plethora. Every year the number of graduates from our dental schools, both public and private, increases because each year the number of universities that include the Degree in Dentistry in their studies increases. This increase of the number of dentists is not directly proportional to a growth in demand for dental services by patients, among other reasons, because oral health continues to be ‘the great forgotten thing in our country’. The WHO recommends a dentist for every 3,500 inhabitants, while in Spain This ratio stands at one for every 1,192, highlighting that, according to the latest data, between 2010 and 2020 there has been an increase of 43% in the number of dentists in Spain.
Finally, we are requesting the Administrations involved to approval of specialties in dentistry. Spain is the only European country where there is no recognized specialization in the different disciplines of our profession, which means that our dentists cannot compete abroad under the same conditions as the rest of the community professionalsalthough they have carried out the studies that qualify them.
- Fundamentally, what do Córdoba dentists demand?
The problems of our members are basically the same as those of the rest of the provinces: a strong bureaucratization of the profession; the competence to which they are subjected by those dental clinics owned outside the profession, in which Economic interests instead of those that should really move us as health professionals; and the lack of awareness of the population in the prevention and cure of oral diseases.
“The increase in the number of dentists has reached a rate much higher than that recommended by the WHO.”
It is necessary that our professional exercise is carried out under the strictest health and safety protocols for the patient. For this reason, for years we have been implementing rigorous safety measures. disinfection and sterilization in our dental clinics to avoid cross-transmission of patient-clinic staff-patient diseases. These control mechanisms are supervised by the Health Administration in its periodic inspection visits in which, in addition, they monitor compliance with the healthcare processes, safety in the use of infrastructure and equipment, the safe use of medication and health products, the management of waste generated in our consultations and compliance with the rights that the law grants to patients. By having our activity double health and business aspectTo all of the above we must add compliance with both the specific regulations for healthcare centers and those to which all companies are subject (prevention of occupational risks, data protection, tax, labor, etc.). This has led to a strong bureaucratization of our professional activity that, at times, overwhelms us.
Furthermore, as I have mentioned previously, the increase in the number of dentists has reached a rate much higher than that recommended by the WHO. This, together with the lack of population awareness of the importance of oral care and the prevention of oral diseases, and the impact of these on the general health of our body, as well as the economic crises that we have been suffering in recent years that have reduced the visits to the dentisthas caused the supply of dental services to be much higher than the demand for them, leading to strong competition between professionals, which is not always beneficial for the patient either in economic terms or in terms of health and which favors many of our colleagues, especially recent graduates, work in unfavorable conditions.
- What role does school play in society?
The College of Dentists of Córdoba is a Public Law Corporation which has among its functions the organization of the practice of the dentistry profession within the legal framework and within the scope of its competencies. Continuing training is, without a doubt, one of the fundamental purposes of our organization, since thanks to it dentists achieve clinical excellence. Therefore, your permanent education and the continuous updating of their knowledge and practices also impact the oral health of the population.
Regarding the functions that we have designated with our fellow citizens, I have to highlight the work that our Ethics and Deontology Commission has been carrying out, which attends, evaluates and processes the claims that arrive at our school and that could constitute a possible violation of the Spanish Code of Ethics and Deontology. If it is a claim related to clinical practice, said Deontological Commission, for the benefit of the oral health of the population in general, and the profession in particular, carries out a mediation work between the parties in conflict, mediation that cannot be carried out, in any case, when the claim is filed against a commercial company, given that these do not belong to its legal scope. I must also highlight the social work that we carry out by promoting agreements with non-profit entities and associations that ask us to collaborate on projects aimed at people in risk of social exclusion both for the delivery of oral hygiene material and for the organization of workshops on the prevention of oral diseases and healthy habits to have a healthy mouth. In relation to this informative area, the intense work that we have been doing for several years in the media and social networks with information campaigns about oral health.
Two out of every ten Spaniards reduce their visits to the dentist for fear of pain or the economic cost
- What is the state of the oral health of the people of Córdoba?
According to the data presented in the atlas, ‘Oral Health in the European Union’, prepared in 2022 by the General Council of Dentists of Spainour country, together with Hungary, Romania and Cyprus, are at the bottom of the annual visits to the dentist. On the other hand, Spain occupies the bottom of the ranking in terms of public participation in dental spending with coverage of only 2%. With these two data present, to which we should add the lack of awareness and prevention of oral diseases by Public administrationwe can easily deduce that, both in our province As in the rest of the national territory, the state of our oral health is not the most ideal. The figures for the incidence of oral diseases in the population worsen as we enter the most disadvantaged social strata, combined in these cases with the lack of economic resources, educational and training deficiencies. The population is well aware that taking care of our oral health involves a large financial outlay and that ‘going to the dentist is expensive’.
However, the question of why the public healthcare It does not finance, or at least co-finances, as occurs in other countries, the prevention and cure of oral diseases, limiting its participation to certain benefits; nor does he know the heights economic costs What it means for dentists to carry out their professional practice (the necessary infrastructure, the high expenditure on instruments and materials essential in a dental clinic and a long etc.). From my point of view, oral health is expensive for our fellow citizens because there is hardly any public participation like in the rest of the diseases, with the entire investment necessary to serve them in our private companies (health centers). Without information, which is given in awareness campaigns that include recommendations on healthy habits and oral hygiene and on the importance of take care of oral health, There is no prevention and without prevention oral pathologies worsen and, in addition to the impact that this worsening has on our body, its cure becomes more expensive. And let’s not forget that maintaining good oral health is a fundamental part of our general healthbecause the oral pathologiesThey have a great impact on other diseases of our body.