How to Complain About a Dentist
Want to complain about a dentist or a particular treatment? Here’s how to make a complaint or apply for a refund.
We’re extremely sorry to hear that you’re considering making a complaint, and regardless if you’re complaining about our dental studio or another local practice, we’ve put together this page to break down the process of submitting a dental complaint, so you can understand as easy as possible how to do it formally.
Here at Gentle Dental, we follow a strict procedure for handling patient feedback and complaints. Like many other dental practices, we have specific steps in place to handle any patient concern regarding treatment, service, or staff in an appropriate and timely manner.
How the GDC expect dentists to handle complaints
Alongside 28 other dental organisations, the General Dental Council has developed a set of universal principles that dentists should follow to handle complaints.
These six core principles should be followed:
- All of your feedback is important to us.
- We want to make raising a concern or complaint easy for you.
- We follow a complaints procedure and keep you informed.
- We will try to answer all your questions and any concerns you raise.
- We want you to have a positive experience when making a complaint.
- Your feedback will help us improve our service.
How to complain about a dental practice or dentist
Patients wishing to complain must do so within 12 months of treatment.
- Contact the practice by telephone or email to speak to the relevant person to resolve the complaint. In our case, this is Dr Ali Rifai.
- Patients can also send a formal, written complaint via post.
- If you don’t wish to complain directly to the practice, you can make a complaint with The Dental Complaints Service (020 8253 0800), General Dental Council or the Care Quality Commission. The CQC will not settle any disputes, but your feedback might prompt their inspection.
- If the problem is so serious that a dental professional could cause harm to patients or the general public, then you should direct your complaint to the GDC.
- To make a complaint about an NHS practice or dentist click here.
If you’ve already submitted a complaint but disagree with how the dentist or practice has handled it or are unhappy with the informal approach, patients should ask the practice for a copy of their complaints handling procedure. This will provide you with the details of the regulating authority boards so you can take your complaint further.
Making a complaint about the Gentle Dental
Here at the Gentle Dental, we aim to respond to patient complaints in an empathetic and sensitive way. Patients can rest assured that we learn from each of our mistakes and always approach complaints constructively.
Our practice founder and principal dentist, Dr Ali Rifai, is responsible for handling and dealing with all practice complaints. Whether you’re complaining via telephone, email or post, your complaint will be referred to the practice principal immediately.
When a complaint is made about clinical care, or associated charges, then the complaint is often referred to the dentist concerned, unless the patient specifies otherwise.
Complaining patients can expect us to acknowledge their complaint in writing and enclose next step details about our code of practice within three working days.
We will investigate the complaint over the next ten working days and attempt to discuss the details with you.
