College of General Dentistry News

Dental leaders discuss professional development and career support

Senior College members took part in a recent meeting of dental leaders from across the UK to share learning on how best to support the careers and professional development of the future dental team.

College panellists, speakers and presenters at the Dental Leadership Network: (l-r) Roshni Karia, Manish Prasad, Ewen McColl and Catherine Rutland

Dr Roshni Karia MCGDent (President of the College) and Dr Manish Prasad FCGDent (Clinical Director at MyDentist and a CGDent Certified Membership Facilitator) both participated in a panel discussion on the question of ‘How do we align the needs of the sector with the expectations of new dental professionals?’.

Dr Karia, who was previously an early careers observer on the board of the former Faculty of General Dental Practice UK (FGDP) and more recently was a member of the College’s Career Pathways Programme Board, noted that new dental professionals are looking for support and guidance to enable them to have fulfilling careers offering flexibility, a sustainable work-life balance and opportunities for growth and recognition. She added that the College is in the process of developing structured pathways for all members of the dental team which will align these desires with the needs of the sector by recognising appropriate education, experience and skills acquisition at each career stage.

Professor Ewen McColl FCGDent (Chair of the Dental Schools Council, member of the College Council and Editor of the College’s Standards in Dentistry publication) gave a presentation on “How do we prepare BDS students for practice?” and took part in a panel discussion on “Ensuring development opportunities that meet the needs of  individual dental professionals“.

The sessions took place at the most recent ‘Dental Leadership Network’ day convened by the General Dental Council to facilitate shared ownership in addressing key challenges facing the profession.

Dr Catherine Rutland FCGDent (Clinical Director at Denplan) closed the event, and was also a facilitator of the final workshop session alongside Fiona Ellwood BEM (Executive Director of the Society of British Dental Nurses, Associate Member of the College and former Honorary Fellow of the FGDP).

Other attendees included Professor Avijit Banerjee FCGDent (Chair of the College’s Faculty of Dentists), Dr Debbie Reed FCGDent (Chair of the College’s Faculty of Dental Nursing & Orthodontic Therapy), Bill Sharpling FCGDent (Chair of the College’s Faculty of Clinical Dental Technology & Dental Technology), and College Council members Helen Kaney FCGDent and Miranda Steeples AssocFCGDent.

Held in London on 25 March on the theme of ‘Future dental team: their expectations, development and career’’, the event followed a previous meeting on workforce challenges involving Dr Abhi Pal FCGDent (then President of the College), Dr Debbie Reed FCGDent, Dr Catherine Tannahill MCGDent (Director of Clinician Engagement of Portman Dental) and Ashley Byrne FCGDent (Board Member of the Dental Laboratories Association). 

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College of General Dentistry News

Dental professionals invited to College Summer Reception

The College has issued an open invitation to all College members and other dental professionals to attend its 2025 Summer Reception.

The Summer Reception, incorporating the fourth annual College Fellows’ Summer Reception, will be an opportunity to network with your peers in the grand surroundings of the historic Cutlers’ Hall, and all dental professionals and those with professional interests in contemporary dentistry are invited to attend, with discounted tickets available to College members.

The event will include the ceremonial admission of new Fellows, and for the first time also Associate Fellows of the College. The President’s Award, typically given for charitable endeavours related to dentistry, will also be presented during the Reception, and this year’s winner of the prestigious College Medal is also expected to be announced. Photographs of the event will be made available to attendees shortly afterwards to download free of charge.

The College Summer Reception takes place from 5pm to 8pm on Friday 13 June in Sheffield, with registration open from 4.30pm.

It will be preceded from 2pm by the Inaugural College of General Dentistry Lecture, to be delivered by Martin Kelleher FCGDent, Consultant in Restorative Dentistry at King’s College Dental Hospital. Intended to stimulate and provoke healthy debate, this will challenge the notion of the ‘ideal treatment plan’ and contend that subconscious bias and possible self-interests can lead some supposed experts to confuse their version of a questionable ‘gold standard’ with what is really in a patient’s overall best interests and with what the law expects. This is also open to all dental professionals to attend, and CPD certificates will be provided.

Tickets are available for the reception only, lecture only, or combined lecture and reception. ‘Early Bird’ rates currently apply.

To secure your place, click the button below:

BOOK YOUR PLACE

For further information, visit the College’s events pages.

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College of General Dentistry News

Voting open for College Council elections

Voting is now open for seats on the College Council, and all eligible members are encouraged to cast their vote(s).

The Council is the voice of our members, overseeing our role as a professional body and guiding the development of the College to fulfil its mission. Six regional seats are being elected this year, with elected candidates due to serve from June 2025 – June 2028. A ballot of eligible members is required for three of these seats: National, Overseas and South Thames.

All Full Members, Associate Fellows and Fellows of the College are eligible to vote in the election to either the National or Overseas seats (depending on the address they have registered with the College), and those registered within the South Thames region (formerly South East and South West Thames) are eligible to vote both in that election and for the National seat.

College Council elections employ the Alternative Vote (AV) system, under which eligible members rank candidates in order of preference. A candidate receiving over 50 per cent of first preference votes is elected. Otherwise the candidate with the fewest first preference votes is eliminated and their second preference votes are reallocated to the remaining candidates until one candidate has more votes than the other remaining candidates put together.

All eligible members have been sent an email (on Wednesday 26 March 2025) by the College’s election services provider, Mi-Voice, to the email address which the member has registered with the College. This email confirms the election(s) for which the member is eligible to vote, and contains a unique link through which they can complete and submit their vote(s) online. The deadline to cast votes is Friday 2 May 2025.

Please ensure that your membership of CGDent is up to date before you vote, otherwise your vote might not count. The CGDent member register displays a list of all current members. Alternatively, you can contact us at [email protected] to confirm your membership status. If you do need to renew your membership, you can do this easily online here

New members joining during the voting period will also be eligible to vote, but should note that it will take around a week for their unique voting details to be issued to them, and late votes will not be counted.

The candidates are listed below; their election statements can be read via the email(s) from Mi Voice.

National seat

Overseas seat

South Thames

Following the election, the results will be announced in late May or early June.

If you are an eligible member but cannot find the email from Mi-Voice inviting you to vote in your inbox, please check your junk or spam folder, and if necessary double-check the email account you have registered with the College by logging in at https://cgdent.uk/my-account

If you experience any technical difficulties submitting your vote(s), please contact Mi-Voice at [email protected] or on 02380 763987.

REMINDERS: VOTES SHOULD BE CAST THROUGH THE UNIQUE LINK SENT TO ELIGIBLE MEMBERS BY MI-VOICE BY EMAIL; VOTING CLOSES ON FRIDAY 2 MAY 2025

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College of General Dentistry Blog, Uncategorized

The year in review 2024-25

Dr Mick Horton FCGDent, Chair of Trustees and co-host of the recent Annual Members’ Meeting, reviews the College’s achievements over the past twelve months.

I am delighted to open this report with the confidence that steady growth in membership supplies, strengthening our youthful organisation at a time when wider trends are not so positive amongst professional bodies. Fellowship in particular is proving an attractive goal for many senior practitioners, who have lacked the opportunity of such recognition in a healthcare system which provides too few opportunities to celebrate excellence in general practice. Growing strength in membership enables greater ambition in our service to the public through our professional community.

In the short existence of the College, more than 20,000 dental professionals and others have set up online CGDent accounts to make use of the key services we provide – and most significantly, our authoritative Standards and Guidance publications. In December, we launched our College Subscriber offer, as a means to serve this rapidly-expanding community more effectively – and to give us a much richer picture of who is using our guidance, and how.

This January, we published a vital statement of the mission of the College and Council’s Vision for Dentistry, shaping our thinking and planning for the future. This defining document sets out very clearly, how and why the College should be at the heart of thinking on the future for oral health in the UK and beyond.

Training and development is an increasingly confusing arena for all members of the dental team, and the College has been giving very careful thought to the most effective role that we can play to improve matters. We have a reputation built on the hugely respected qualifications delivered by the former FGDP over decades, but in today’s thriving postgraduate dental education market there is little room for the College to add value in quite the way that our predecessor organisation did. In 2024, we embarked on the development of a new ‘credentialing’ role, which will result in the launch of new forms of recognition for higher skills, in the first half of 2025. We have been delighted with the support and cooperation from so many organisations and agencies, enabling us to bring forward credentialing systems that will carry real weight and credibility.

Early careers are equally a focus for the College. The first Tom Bereznicki Charitable Educational Foundation awards were made in the summer, and we are delighted to be working hand in hand with the Foundation on Tom’s greater aspirations to develop the skills of early career practitioners. The first cohort of successful candidates, gaining remarkable training opportunities in Europe, were celebrated at our Fellows’ Summer Reception.

We reported last year on our partnership with Haleon, for which the College engaged a range of dental practices around the UK in an analysis of the opportunities for them to promote preventative care. We published our joint report in the autumn of 2024, and followed it up with a parliamentary meeting attended by MPs and officials.

Implant Dentistry has been a focus of activity for the College in the past year, with a pair of themed issues of the Primary Dental Journal and the launch of the College’s authoritative Register of Implant Mentors in partnership with the ADI and the ITI. This is just the first of a number of Registers of Expertise that have been mooted to raise standards in key areas of practice.

We celebrated the 50th issue of the Journal at Cutlers Hall, London, before the Fellows’ Winter Reception in January. Under the inspired Editorship of Prof Igor Blum, the journal now reaches worldwide audiences, gaining substantially in authority and credibility, and many of our themed issues have been commended as key points of reference for every practitioner – take, for one example amongst many, the recent issue on Dental Trauma.

The Fellows’ Receptions themselves have proven perennially popular for our senior membership community, and we plan to build on this in 2025 by linking the Reception to our first College Lecture. The College Lecture cements our role in thought leadership and our academic standing.

Fresh ideas and energy have been brought to Council with the election of a significant number of new representatives, and the appointment of our new President, Roshni Karia, following the completion of Abhi Pal’s three-year term of office. Abhi served as the College’s first President, and has done so much to establish the credentials of a new organisation, with boundless energy and ideas that have shaped our direction.

Thank you for your continued support.

The next Annual Members’ Meeting will take place on Tuesday 3 March 2026, 7pm-8pm, online.

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College of General Dentistry News

Roy Bennett appointed College Trustee

Dr Roy Bennett FCGDent, a Merseyside-based dentist with a special interest in the care of anxious patients, has been appointed as a Trustee of the College.

With over 35 years’ experience, including 15 years part-time in NHS hospital-based special care dentistry, Dr Bennett has undertaken thousands of sedation cases including intravenous, inhalation, oral, intranasal and hypnotherapy, and has accepted referrals and supported practices across the North West of England.

Director of Mellow Sedation Training Services, he is a highly experienced undergraduate and postgraduate teacher and is accredited as a course organiser by the Intercollegiate Advisory Committee on Sedation in Dentistry. He is a member and mentor of both the Dental Sedation Teacher Group and the Society for Advancement of Anaesthesia in Dentistry, a past board member of the Association of Dental Anaesthetists and a Senior Clinical Adviser for UK Sedation.

He graduated from Liverpool Dental School in 1987, completed postgraduate training in conscious sedation and holds the Diploma of Membership of the former Faculty of General Dental Practice UK (FGDP), a Diploma in Dental Science from the University of Liverpool and a Postgraduate Diploma in Forensic Odontology from the University of Hertfordshire. He is a Fellow of the College and of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Dr Bennett succeeds Dr Janet Clarke MBE FCGDent, former Deputy Chief Dental Officer for England, who served on the Board of Trustees from 2019 to 2024, including three years as Chair.

Trustees, who serve three-year terms of office, are accountable for the fulfilment of the College’s legal and regulatory duties as a charity, and for ensuring the proper running of the organisation.

The other members of the Board of Trustees are former FGDP Dean Dr Mick Horton FCGDent (Chair), former FGDP Vice Dean Onkar Dhanoya FCGDent, UCL Hygiene and Therapy Programme Deputy Director Marie Parker FCGDent, governance specialist Jane Clarke, experienced CFO Neil Sawbridge and solicitor Fred Thomson.

Dr Bennett is co-presenter of the College’s CPD webinar, Introduction to Remimazolam in Procedural Sedation in Dentistry, which is free for members to watch online.

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College of General Dentistry News

College endorses updated guidance on prevention of caries in children

The College has endorsed newly updated guidance on preventing tooth decay in children from the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP).

The third edition of Prevention and Management of Dental Caries in Children, published this week, aims to support dental teams to improve and maintain the oral health of their younger patients through the delivery of preventive care and, where necessary, effective management of dental caries.

It also encourages shared decision-making, providing strategies for the dental team to support and empower children and young people (and their parents or carers) to take an active role in maintaining their oral health.

The guidance has been updated following a thorough review of the evidence, and after consultation with dental organisations including the College. While many parts remain unchanged, revisions since the second edition include amendment of the recommendation about preventive fissure sealants and wider application of vital pulp therapy in permanent teeth, with a new key recommendation about pulpotomy for treatment of pulpitis with irreversible symptoms.

The new guidance, and a downloadable ‘Guidance in Brief’ summary, are available at https://www.childcaries.sdcep.org.uk

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College of General Dentistry News

Martin Kelleher to deliver inaugural College Lecture

The College has announced that Martin Kelleher FCGDent will be delivering the inaugural College Lecture on 13 June 2025.

‘Satisficing’ standards in dentistry: Who decides? Who benefits? will challenge the notion of the ‘ideal treatment plan’ and contend that subconscious bias and possible self-interests can lead some supposed experts to confuse their version of a questionable ‘gold standard’ with what is really in a patient’s overall best interests and with what the law expects.

Intended to stimulate and provoke healthy debate, the lecture will build on the rich legacy of the Malcolm Pendlebury Lectures hosted by the College’s predecessor organisation, the Faculty of General Dental Practice UK (FGDP).

Martin Kelleher has been a Consultant in Restorative Dentistry at King’s College Hospital, London since 1984 and has well- known interests in solving seemingly complex dental problems with various minimally destructive approaches. He is on the GDC specialist lists for Restorative Dentistry and Prosthodontics and owned his own practice in Bromley, Kent for nearly 40 years.

He is a Fellow of the Faculties of Dental Surgery at the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and England, as well as the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is also a Fellow of the College of General Dentistry, a Fellow and former President of the British Society for Restorative Dentistry, and a former Chairman of the Southern Counties Branch of the British Dental Association. 

Mr Kelleher graduated from University College Dublin in 1971, holds a Master’s degree in Conservative Dentistry and is the author or co-author of very numerous peer-reviewed articles on a wide variety of topics, as well as chapters in dental textbooks and a book on dental bleaching. He served on the board of Dental Protection for a decade, including three years as Chair of its Advisory Committee for Dental Claims. He is a renowned speaker, having lectured to many national dental associations and specialist societies as well as internationally for over 40 years.

The inaugural College of General Dentistry Lecture will take place in the historic Cutlers’ Hall in Sheffield, and will be followed by the College’s Summer Reception. CPD certificates will be provided.

All dental professionals, and others with professional interests in contemporary dental practice, are eligible to attend both events. Discounted places are available to College members.

To secure your place at current ‘Early Bird’ rates, click the button below:

BOOK YOUR PLACE

For further information, visit the College’s events pages.

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College of General Dentistry News

Candidates for election to the College Council 2025

Nominations recently closed for seats on the College Council and verification of candidates has now taken place.

 A ballot of eligible members is required for three of the seats being decided this year:

  • National
  • Overseas
  • South Thames

The candidates for these seats are as follows:

National seat

Overseas seat

South Thames

Eligible members will receive the candidates’ election statements, with instructions on how to vote, when voting opens on Wednesday 26 March 2025. These will be sent by the College’s election services provider, Mi-Voice, to the email address which the member has registered with the College. Members will then have until Friday 2 May 2025 to cast their vote(s).

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College of General Dentistry News

Recruitment of a Membership Manager

The College is looking for a Membership Manager to join its staff team.

The post-holder will oversee and deliver the College’s membership administration and support function. Dealing directly with our dental professional members and subscribers, they will assess sometimes complex applications, manage member queries and oversee membership subscriptions. They will also be required to confidently use and interrogate the College’s CRM database and payment platforms to support these processes. 

The College is a small team, and so the role will be varied and dynamic, with the opportunity to help improve and build our processes as we grow as an organisation. We are looking for someone who is quick to learn, organised and who has excellent attention to detail. 

You will need to have drive and a passion for process excellence and improvement. You will need to be able to think logically, and proactively deal with some complex information and situations related to membership and other applications. The role will therefore suit someone who is interested in thinking beyond the issue at hand and who will proactively problem solve, and advise on process improvement.

Previous experience in using and interrogating a CRM database is essential, and experience in a membership role is preferred. The role is full-time and hybrid (but predominantly home-based). Full details are available in the role description below.

ROLE DESCRIPTION

To apply, submit your CV and covering letter, outlining why you think you are suitable for the role, to [email protected]

**PLEASE NOTE THIS OPPORTUNITY HAS NOW CLOSED**

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College of General Dentistry Blog

Why learning about occlusion is vital for early career dentists

Dr Tom Bereznicki FCGDent, founder of the Tom Bereznicki Dental Educational Foundation, explains the importance of occlusion and why he is committed to educating younger colleagues on the topic.

The modern undergraduate curriculum allows very little time for occlusion to be covered as a topic. Through my experience of teaching younger dentists, I have noticed in recent years that when I ask what the clinical occlusal examination findings are, the reply often comes back with an orthodontic classification. Few early career dentists are aware of the importance of studying not just the static occlusion, but the dynamic one too.

In over 40 years of practice, I have seen many cases of occlusally-related failure, highlighting the vital importance of paying due consideration to the occlusal scheme in treatment planning. I am passionate about educating early career dentists and through my charitable foundation, I have organised a symposium on the topic of occlusion, in collaboration with the College, which aims to enhance delegates’ knowledge of the basic principles of occlusion and how they can support the success and longevity of restorative treatment.

With the odd exceptions such as anterior open bites and skeletal Class 3’s, patients’ occlusal schemes should adhere to the basic principles of occlusion, not just when providing complex multiple indirect restorations and treatment of wear cases, but also simpler single indirect restorations, and most importantly, the long-term maintenance of intact healthy dentitions.

The cases illustrated below draw attention to some common examples of occlusally-related failure.

To avoid occlusal derangement, the extracted tooth should have been replaced as soon after extraction as possible

Failure to investigate the crack when it first appeared – now the tooth needs to be extracted

Correct dynamic mandibular excursions when fitting fixed restorations to help prevent failure especially with cantilever designs

Missing the tell-tale signs of unwanted wear, seen here as wear facets, can lead to root fracture

Spotting early signs of unwanted occlusal wear helps prevent extensive treatment at a later date

Failure to check excursive mandibular excursions, especially when fitting restorations, can result in loss of canine guidance and restorative failure

In bruxers, veneer failure can also frequently be seen as fracture of the porcelain in the gingival third of the restoration

Over instrumentation during root canal therapy weakens the root making it susceptible to fracture particularly when acting as a cantilever abutment

Although titanium is extremely hard, it is not unbreakable. If occlusal forces are not refined, fracture or associated non-perimplantitis bone loss can lead to failure

I will be addressing occlusally-related failure cases like these in the opening session at the Introduction to Occlusion Symposium. I will be joined by a fantastic line-up of experts: Professor Paul Tipton, Dr Ken Harris, Dr Tif Qureshi, Dr Shiraz Khan and Dr Koray Feran. Through a series of lectures, they will examine the five basic principles of occlusion in detail and how they can support the placement of successful, long-term restorations.

Information will also be available on a range of postgraduate courses which cover aspects of occlusion in greater depth, for those who wish to extend their knowledge further.

The Introduction to Occlusion Symposium, takes place on Saturday 5 April 2025 in London.

Click for further information and to book your place

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