The Gossip Cavity: Why Professionalism Starts With How We Talk About Each Other

Dentistry is a small world. Chances are, the OHT down the road trained with your old boss, the hygienist in the next practice went to Uni with your business partner, and everyone knows everyone by at least two degrees of separation. That closeness is one of the profession’s biggest strengths, but it’s also exactly why what we say about each other matters so much. In a small profession, a comment doesn’t stay small for long.

It’s not “just venting”

We’ve all had a hard day. A patient complained about their bill, a colleague who changed a treatment plan, a clinical decision we’d have made differently. It’s normal to want to talk it through. But there’s a real difference between debriefing constructively, with the right person, for the right reason, and spreading opinions dressed up as fact to whoever will listen.

The second one isn’t harmless. It’s a professional risk, and increasingly, it’s a regulatory one.

What Ahpra actually says

The Code of Conduct that governs dental and oral health practitioners is built on the idea that good relationships between practitioners aren’t a nice-to-have, they’re core to patient care. Ahpra’s shared Code is explicit that “good relationships with colleagues and other practitioners strengthen the practitioner-patient relationship, support collaboration, and enhance patient care, and that this requires healthcare to be free of discrimination, bullying, and harassment“. (Ahpra Code Of Conduct)

The Code also sets a broader expectation of us as professionals: that we “display a standard of professional behaviour that warrants the trust and respect of the community” Ahpra Code of Conduct: Principle 8 which includes practising with honesty and integrity, not just in the surgery, but in every interaction that carries our professional identity with it. That includes what we say about colleagues, on the record or off.

Untrue or unverified claims about another practitioner’s competence, character, or conduct aren’t protected as “just an opinion.” Depending on what’s said and where, this can shade into defamation, vexatious complaints, or conduct that itself becomes the subject of a notification; meaning the person doing the talking can end up the one under scrutiny.

Why it costs more than one relationship

Every time misinformation about a colleague circulates in a group chat, at a CPD event, in a patient-facing comment, it does a few things at once:

• It damages an individual’s reputation, often based on one side of a story, or no story at all.
• It erodes trust across the wider team, including between professions, where OHTs, dentists, hygienists, and specialists already have to work hard to build mutual respect.
• It lowers the standing of the profession as a whole. Patients notice when practitioners undermine each other. It doesn’t read as passion or high standards, it reads as unprofessional, and it chips away at public confidence in all of us.

That last point is worth sitting with. Every oral health professional is, whether they like it or not, a representative of the whole profession every time they open their mouth about someone else in it. Advocacy for our scope of practice, our credibility, our seat at the table; all of it is undercut the moment we’re seen tearing each other down.

Collegiality is a clinical skill, not a soft one

Respect for the dental team, every part of it, from reception to specialist isn’t about being nice for the sake of it. It’s about creating an environment where people feel safe raising concerns properly, where referrals happen because of trust rather than politics, and where patients get the benefit of a team that’s actually functioning as one.

If something genuinely needs to be raised – a conduct concern, a competency issue, a safety risk, there are proper channels for that: direct conversation where appropriate, escalation to a practice principal, or a formal notification to Ahpra if it meets that threshold. Those pathways exist precisely so concerns are dealt with fairly, not filtered through rumour.

Talking about someone behind their back isn’t a shortcut to accountability. It’s just a slower way of damaging trust: theirs, yours, and the profession’s.

What can you do?

Professionalism isn’t just what happens between you and a patient in the chair. It’s how we speak about the people we work alongside publicly, privately, and everywhere in between. Protecting the reputation of our colleagues protects the credibility of the whole profession, and that’s something worth being deliberate about, every single day.

Some old wisdom that still holds up

None of this is a new idea, it’s just old advice we sometimes need reminding of:

• “Loose lips sink ships.” What feels like harmless chat can do damage well beyond the room it was said in.
• “If you’ve nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Simple, and still one of the best filters before you speak.
• “A good name is worth more than riches.” Reputation. Yours and theirs, is one of the hardest things to rebuild once it’s gone.
• “Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.” It takes years to build a professional reputation and moments to undo one, for both the person being talked about and the one doing the talking.
• “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” None of us are immune from a bad day, a difficult case, or a decision we’d make differently in hindsight, worth remembering before judging someone else’s.

Good advice tends to repeat itself for a reason. This is one of those times.