GDC Enhanced CPD and Facial Aesthetics: What Dentists Need to Know (2026)
Written by Dr Tom Fisher, GP and founder of Fisher Clinics. Last reviewed 27/07/2026.
If you are a dentist providing facial-aesthetic treatments alongside dentistry, you are working across two related but regulatorily distinct areas of clinical practice.
Your dental practice is regulated by the General Dental Council, and you must meet the GDC's Enhanced CPD requirements. Cosmetic botulinum toxin and injectable dermal filler treatments, however, are currently treated as non-dental activities rather than the practice of dentistry.
In May 2026, the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners published a statement, developed through close work with the GDC, confirming that procedures including botulinum toxin and dermal fillers fall outside the GDC's remit as the regulator of dentistry. The statement explains that dental professionals may nevertheless extend their personal scope of practice into activities outside dentistry, provided they can evidence the training, competence and indemnity or insurance needed to perform them safely.
That distinction matters. It means you should not assume that every facial-aesthetics course can be counted towards your statutory GDC hours. Equally, the fact that these treatments are not regulated as dentistry does not remove the need for proper training, ongoing learning, reflection, complication management and clinical governance.
This guide explains both sides: what the GDC formally requires, and how dentists can maintain a credible professional-development record for their facial-aesthetics work.
The quick answer
Every registered dental professional must meet the Enhanced CPD requirements during each five-year CPD cycle.
The minimum number of verifiable hours depends on your registered title:
Dentists: 100 hours
Dental therapists, dental hygienists, orthodontic therapists and clinical dental technicians: 75 hours
Dental nurses and dental technicians: 50 hours
If you are registered under more than one GDC title, you must meet the minimum requirement for the title with the highest number of hours. Your CPD must also include activity relevant to your current or intended field of practice under all the titles you hold.
There are also rules about how your CPD is spread, planned and recorded:
You must normally complete at least 10 hours of verifiable CPD during every two consecutive CPD years, including where one five-year cycle ends and the next begins.
The two-year requirement does not apply during the first year of your first CPD cycle, because there is not yet a completed two-year period.
You must submit an annual CPD statement to the GDC every year, even if you completed zero hours during that year.
Only verifiable CPD can be counted towards your required hours and declared to the GDC.
You must maintain a personal development plan (PDP).
You must keep a log of completed verifiable CPD and supporting evidence for each activity.
Each planned and completed activity must be linked to at least one of the GDC's four development outcomes.
Your CPD record should include a reflective element.
You must retain your CPD record for five years after the relevant five-year cycle has ended.
You do not necessarily have to complete CPD every year. However, you cannot leave everything until the end of the cycle, because of the requirement to complete at least 10 hours during each consecutive two-year period.
The GDC continues to review its longer-term approach to lifelong learning and professional development. The Enhanced CPD requirements described here remain the current scheme unless and until the GDC formally changes them.
What makes CPD verifiable?
A course is not automatically verifiable simply because its provider describes it as CPD.
For an activity to count towards your GDC hours, you must record it in your activity log and obtain appropriate evidence from the provider. That evidence should contain:
the CPD subject and learning content;
the aims and objectives;
the anticipated GDC development outcome or outcomes;
the date on which the activity was completed;
the number of CPD hours;
your name as the participant;
confirmation that the activity was quality-assured, including the person or body responsible for the quality assurance; and
confirmation that the information supplied is complete and accurate.
In most cases, this evidence will be a CPD certificate. However, the GDC may also accept a mapping document or supporting email from the provider where the certificate itself does not contain everything required.
It remains your responsibility to make sure you have the evidence needed before relying on an activity for your GDC declaration.
Informal or non-verifiable learning may still be professionally valuable, but it cannot be included in the verifiable hours you submit to the GDC.
Your PDP and dental field of practice
Your PDP should be based on your current or intended field of practice as a dental professional.
That means considering the full breadth of your dental work, including:
the clinical procedures you regularly perform;
any specialist or professionally focused roles;
the needs of your patient population;
your working environment;
teaching, management or leadership responsibilities;
areas in which your knowledge or skills need updating; and
new dental skills you intend to develop.
Your PDP should identify the learning you plan to undertake, the development outcomes associated with it, and the anticipated timeframe for completing it.
It is not intended to remain unchanged for the full five years. Your work, responsibilities and learning needs may evolve, so your PDP should be reviewed regularly and adjusted where necessary.
Where does facial aesthetics fit?
The GDC currently describes cosmetic botulinum toxin and injectable dermal filler treatments as non-dental tasks.
Its guidance states that administering botulinum toxin for cosmetic purposes is not the practice of dentistry. It similarly places injectable dermal fillers outside the practice of dentistry and the GDC's direct regulatory remit.
The JCCP's May 2026 statement describes this in terms of dental professionals extending their personal scope of practice into activities outside dentistry. It would therefore be inaccurate to say that starting facial aesthetics automatically adds a new statutory dental field of practice, or that every aesthetics activity must appear within your dental PDP.
However, this does not mean that your status and responsibilities as a dental professional become irrelevant the moment you provide a non-dental cosmetic treatment.
The GDC expects dental professionals who provide botulinum toxin or other non-surgical cosmetic procedures to maintain the same high professional standards expected of them elsewhere. In particular, they should:
work within their knowledge and professional competence;
be prepared to justify their clinical decisions;
have appropriate indemnity or insurance;
comply with the relevant prescribing requirements;
act safely and within the law; and
maintain appropriate professional standards when advertising their services.
A dentist providing facial aesthetics should therefore maintain structured, ongoing education and governance for this work, even where some of that learning cannot be counted towards their GDC CPD requirement.
Can facial-aesthetics courses count towards GDC CPD?
Potentially, but this should not be assumed.
The GDC does not publish a procedure-specific rule stating that facial-aesthetics education either always qualifies or never qualifies as GDC CPD.
What it does require is that any declared activity:
meets the GDC's requirements for verifiable evidence; and
is relevant to your current or intended field of practice as a dental professional.
When making your annual statement, you must confirm that the CPD you are declaring was relevant to your field or fields of practice.
Because cosmetic injectable procedures are treated as activities outside the practice of dentistry, a course devoted purely to injection technique, an individual filler product or the commercial delivery of cosmetic treatments should not automatically be assumed to count towards the statutory dental CPD requirement.
Some aesthetics-related education may nevertheless overlap substantially with dental practice. Examples could include:
consent and shared decision-making;
managing medical emergencies;
infection prevention and control;
safeguarding;
communication and complaints;
prescribing safety;
record keeping;
professional ethics; and
recognising and responding to adverse clinical events.
Where an activity genuinely develops your practice as a dental professional and the evidence satisfies the GDC's requirements, it may be reasonable to include it in your GDC record. This remains a matter for the individual registrant to assess and justify.
A course may therefore be valuable and necessary professional development for your facial-aesthetics practice without necessarily qualifying towards your GDC hours.
Before relying on an aesthetics course for GDC CPD, check:
whether the provider supplies all the evidence required for verifiable CPD;
which GDC development outcomes the provider says the activity addresses;
whether those outcomes genuinely reflect its content;
how the learning relates to your practice as a dental professional; and
whether you could clearly explain that relevance if your record were audited.
A training provider can confirm the activity's content, evidence and quality-assurance arrangements. However, it cannot guarantee that the activity is relevant to your individual GDC field of practice.
Where you remain uncertain, seek clarification directly from the GDC rather than relying solely on the provider's description of the course.
The four GDC development outcomes
Every planned and completed verifiable CPD activity must be linked to at least one development outcome.
The GDC encourages dental professionals to consider all four during a cycle, but it is not compulsory for every registrant to complete CPD under every outcome.
Outcome A: communication. Effective communication with patients, the dental team and others across dentistry. This may include areas such as consent, complaints, safeguarding and raising concerns.
Outcome B: management and leadership. Effective management of yourself and others, working constructively with the dental team and providing leadership where appropriate.
Outcome C: knowledge and clinical skills. Maintaining and developing your knowledge and skills within your dental field of practice. Most dental clinical and technical education will sit under this outcome.
Outcome D: professionalism and patient confidence. Maintaining the skills, behaviours and attitudes that protect patient confidence, uphold the reputation of the dental profession and put patients' interests first.
A single activity may address more than one outcome. The mapping should reflect what the activity actually teaches, rather than being added retrospectively simply to make a certificate fit.
Reflection does not have to mean an essay after every course
Reflection is part of Enhanced CPD, but the GDC does not prescribe one particular format.
You might reflect:
after an individual course;
periodically across several activities;
during an annual PDP review;
through a discussion with a colleague or mentor; or
following an audit, complaint, complication or significant event.
Your activity log should include a reflective element or indicate that reflection has taken place. This does not necessarily require a lengthy written reflection after every certificate.
The useful questions are usually simple:
What did I learn?
Did it confirm or change my existing practice?
Is there anything I now need to do differently?
Has it identified another learning need?
Does my PDP need updating?
The purpose is not to produce paperwork for its own sake. It is to show that your education has been considered and applied, rather than merely attended.
Building a professional-development record for facial aesthetics
Because facial aesthetics often sits outside a dentist's normal dental systems, its training, outcomes and learning needs can easily become fragmented.
A sensible aesthetics governance record might include:
initial training and competency assessment;
ongoing anatomy and injection-technique education;
product-specific training;
consent and patient-selection education;
psychological assessment and the management of expectations;
complication recognition and management;
emergency preparedness;
prescribing updates;
case review and clinical audit;
patient feedback;
complaints or significant-event learning; and
reflective notes identifying changes to practice.
This record can sit alongside your formal GDC CPD portfolio.
Where an activity also meets the GDC's relevance and verifiability requirements, it may be incorporated into your GDC record. Where it does not, it can still provide important evidence that you are maintaining your competence within facial aesthetics.
Keep an aesthetic case log, but understand what it is
The GDC's Enhanced CPD requirements do not include a requirement to maintain a separate facial-aesthetics procedure logbook.
However, a proportionate, data-minimised log of the procedures you perform can help you:
understand the range and frequency of your treatments;
monitor outcomes and review rates;
identify complications or recurring problems;
recognise gaps in your experience;
plan future training;
support audit and quality improvement; and
generate useful material for reflection.
Logging a routine clinical procedure does not itself amount to verifiable CPD. The GDC specifically excludes tasks undertaken as part of your normal professional role from being counted as CPD. A case log is therefore a source of evidence and learning needs, rather than a substitute for educational activity.
It must also not replace the full contemporaneous clinical record for the individual patient. Appropriate consent, assessment, treatment details, product and batch information where relevant, aftercare and follow-up should continue to be documented within the clinician's proper patient-record system.
Removing names and contact details supports data minimisation, but it does not necessarily make a record legally anonymous. Clinicians must still consider confidentiality, access controls, information governance and their UK GDPR obligations.
Indemnity and insurance
Do not assume that ordinary dental indemnity automatically covers cosmetic botulinum toxin or dermal filler treatments.
Confirm directly with your indemnity or insurance provider that:
the treatments you perform are included;
all anatomical areas and products you use are covered;
prescribing is covered where applicable;
your training meets the provider's conditions;
any assistants or other clinicians are appropriately covered; and
the clinical settings in which you work are included.
It is sensible to obtain confirmation in writing and retain it with your wider governance records.
The GDC specifically advises dental professionals providing these treatments to ensure that they are trained, competent and appropriately indemnified or insured.
A specific point about botulinum toxin prescribing
Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine.
For dentists, the GDC states that botulinum toxin must not be remotely prescribed for a non-surgical cosmetic procedure, whether by telephone, email, a website or another remote method.
A dentist prescribing botulinum toxin must therefore complete the necessary assessment of the patient themselves, in person, and remain satisfied that the prescription is appropriate, safe and within their competence.
The GDC describes injectable dermal fillers as medical devices that do not require a prescription. Practitioners must nevertheless ensure that the products they use are lawful, traceable and obtained from reputable suppliers, and that they remain appropriately trained, competent and indemnified or insured.
A practical way to keep everything manageable
A practical way to maintain both a GDC CPD record and a wider aesthetics governance portfolio is to record information as you go.
Trying to reconstruct five years of certificates, courses, case numbers, complications and reflections at the end of a cycle is difficult, and often produces a less useful record.
Capturing each learning activity when it happens allows you to:
retain the supporting evidence;
record the correct hours and development outcomes;
reflect while the learning is still fresh;
identify further development needs;
update your PDP where appropriate; and
build a credible picture of how your practice has developed.
That is one of the reasons I built Aesthetics Logbook: a simple app for recording aesthetic treatments, minor procedures and professional-development activity as you work, with space for reflections and feedback.
The app is designed without dedicated fields for direct patient identifiers, supporting data minimisation. Clinicians must not enter identifying information into free-text fields, and must still use the app in accordance with their own confidentiality, information-governance and UK GDPR responsibilities.
The app does not decide whether an activity qualifies as GDC CPD, and it does not replace the formal patient record. What it can do is help you maintain an organised aesthetics portfolio and identify learning that may appropriately feed into your PDP, CPD record and wider clinical governance.
You can find it at aestheticslogbook.com.
This guide is for general information and reflects the GDC's published Enhanced CPD and professional guidance at the time of writing. Facial-aesthetics regulation continues to develop, and individual circumstances differ. Dental professionals should check the latest guidance directly with the GDC and obtain advice from their indemnity or insurance provider where necessary.
