Author: College of General Dentistry

President Emeritus, Professor Nairn Wilson FCGDent, welcomes members to the College of General Dentistry and reflects on the impact of the new College for the general dental profession.

Congratulations on your membership of the College. Please use your new postnominals -FCGDent for Fellows, AssocFCGDent for Associate Fellows and MCGDent for members, to help raise awareness of the College. Also, please encourage the members of your dental team, together with your friends, acquaintances and colleagues in dentistry to follow your good example and join the College. The more members, the sooner the College is going to be able to make application for a Royal Charter, establish faculties and schools and much more besides.

If only dentistry had had its own independent Royal College in years gone by, the standing and status of the profession, the importance of oral health to general health and wellbeing and the impact of dentistry, both NHS and private in healthcare provision would be in a much better place. The College, which is going from strength to strength, intends, amongst many other things, to address these issues and while it is at it, work on transforming public attitude to oral health and the value of lifelong, longitudinal dental care. I see the introduction of the College being akin to a tethered boxer suddenly having full use of both hands. The activation of the College changes the odds which, despite the commendable, ongoing work of the professional associations, have plagued dentistry for longer than anyone cares to remember.

When the College is firmly established as a Royal College of high national and international standing, oral healthcare professionals will look back and wonder how dentistry managed prior to 2021 – no unified voice for the whole profession, a mishmash of career arrangements, exclusion from critical, high level considerations of healthcare, and, most importantly dentistry being undervalued and poorly understood. Our successors, in looking back, will recognise and thank all those who got behind the formation of the College, specifically those listed in the College’s Roll of Honour. As a pioneer in the membership of the College, you too could be included in the Roll, if you are not already listed – a once in a lifetime opportunity to be immortalised in the early history of the College. All you have to do is contact me (nairn.wilson@btinternet.com) and I will be delighted to guide you through the process.

In encouraging you to help fuel the College fire, and get behind our elected President, Abhi Pal, and the recently constituted College Council, the only way forward must be seen to be ‘up’. The College needs more than being timely, unique and forward thinking; it needs its members to be committed to its purpose and vision. Knowing many of the founding members of the College, hopefully including yourself, the College can be confident in going forward. No problem however difficult, no barrier however high, no disagreement however polarised should stop the College realising its transformational potential.

The future of the College and, in turn, dentistry, which I believe to be full of exciting opportunity, is in your hands, as members of the College. Get engaged, help recruit more members and together change things for the better – your College, your future, your call!

Phil Dawson, general dental practitioner with a special interest in restorative dentistry, explains how the College’s Career Pathway for dentists is being developed to provide a clearly defined structure whilst offering the flexibility needed by the contemporary practitioner.

I graduated from the University of Liverpool in December 1991 before commencing my first role as an associate dentist in sunny Wigan the following month. If someone had asked me back then what my career goals were, I think I probably would have answered “to be a dentist”!  Now the best part of 30 years later, I sit writing this blog having achieved, I feel, this mighty goal!

During this time, I am or have variously been:

• Associate dentist
• Principal/partner of multi-group mixed NHS/private practice
• Educational Supervisor/VT trainer (as was)
• Specialty Dentist/Honorary Teaching Fellow at Manchester University
• HEE appointed mentor
• ORE Examiner
• Course Lead/Director/Tutor/Examiner for FGDP Diploma in Restorative Dentistry
• Clinical Support Manager for {my}dentist
• Associate Dental Dean for Conduct & Performance at HEE NW

Despite the above list, if asked by anyone I still describe my job as a “dentist”!

The various stages in my career have developed not as part of some grand master plan, but rather by independent, often disjointed steps. I suspect I will not be alone in this mode of career progression. My career history goes to prove that dental careers often ‘happen’ and develop over the course of our practising lifetime, possibly in unplanned ways and taking directions which initially seem quite unlikely.

My association with FGDP and CGDent began when I completed the second cohort of the Restorative Diploma in 2008. This was to turn out to be a pivotal moment in my career development as most of the roles in the list above were as a direct consequence of this qualification, including becoming Course Lead/Director for the Diploma in a classic poacher turned gamekeeper move! My eternal gratitude goes to Professor Paul Brunton and Mr Ian Wood for such inspiration.

This close association culminated in being asked by CGDent to be Chair of the Working Group for Career Pathways for Dentists. I was tasked with recruiting a group of individuals that was representative of dentists today – no easy task I admit, but I have been blessed with meeting some highly motivated and intelligent fellow dentists throughout my career so far.

The idea was to develop a pathway that identified the different stages of career progression, the key features of these different stages and how these stages might be evidenced. Right from the outset it was emphasised that the old-fashioned notion of ‘tick-box’ career progression was NOT what we were after! Yes, we wanted a framework for career progression, but it was imperative that this framework contained a great degree of flexibility so as to allow the modern 21^st century dentist to adequately showcase their career development whilst also allowing the profession and the public to be confident that such a framework represented a safe and coherent structure to career progression.

Another exciting feature was that this process was to be introduced throughout the WHOLE of the dental team – different working groups were to be similarly set up looking at career progression for hygienist/therapists; dental nurses and orthodontic therapists; clinical dental technicians and dental technicians. I felt this was such an important feature of the process – aligning the career pathways of the WHOLE of the dental team as befits the College of General Dentistry.

My aim was to recruit a team of individuals who, using their own experiences and visions, would be able to develop ideas of career progression along the lines set out above. It was humbling that everyone I approached did agree to join the Working Group – and so it is made up of quite an eclectic group of individuals.

The College’s aim in developing these Career Pathways, is to provide some structure to aid our career progression without this being too prescriptive. As you will appreciate from reading this blog, my own career has followed quite a unique pathway, and the Working Group has been keen to allow for this variability in career development.

As I write this, the final version is still in development but the end-product is looking very exciting. I wish such a structure had been in place all those years ago on that first journey from Liverpool to Wigan….!!

You may also be interested in reading blogs from other practitioners involved in developing the Career Pathways programme.