This thesis seeks to understand why NHS dentistry is yet to effectively respond to the changing demographic and epidemiological distribution of dental disease in the UK. The analysis suggests that the current stasis in NHS dentistry requires a broader explanation that situates the dental service within the wider political economy of healthcare reform. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and a reformed critique of neoliberalism, it is argued that market logic, individualism and consumerism are holding NHS dentistry in a transformational stasis. As both a scientific discipline and a professional occupation, it is argued throughout that understanding the slow pace of reform in NHS dentistry requires a deeper understanding of how science and practise are shaped by neoliberal prerogatives. An extended critique of state-of-the-art dental science and an extensive qualitative study show that the further extension of the market has been accompanied by an obsessive political drive to quantify science and practise, disallowing a wider debate about the direction of the service. The NHS dental service hangs in a precarious balance as professionals try and manage competing objectives and align or converge with policy discourse. As such the political future of NHS dentistry is understood as the reflection of how professionals re-imagine and enact their roles under the restraints of contemporary political economy, and a new opening for a social scientific understanding of dental reform is outlined. The ultimate synthesis of the work suggests that reform of NHS dentistry must recognise, and work within, these constraints if progress is to be made. Closing with a discussion of a possible way forward, the final chapters seek to move beyond critique to outline how policy can effectively integrate dental policy reform within political economic constraints.

The diploma thesis focuses on doing business in dentistry in the UK on the expamle of an unnamed dental practice, which currently consists of three dental practices. The aim of the thesis is to map and describe the characteristic of operating dental practices in the UK. Using available literature, the first part defines theoretical principles of doing business with emphasis on the specifics of dentistry and the region of the UK. This part is followed by the practical part, which puts these principles into practice and describes how the activities and processes are performed in the dental practices from the point of setting out the business by Dr. Jane Smith to their performance today. In order to write the thesis internal data from dental practices were used with addition of information obtained from the owner and a manager of the company.