BDA young dentist conference roundup

Today was spent in Bristol at the Holiday Inn for the third BDA Young Dentist Group Conference. It was a great day with useful lectures on a variety of topics and opportunity to meet like-minded dentists and representatives from the sponsor companies.

I thought I would just do a quick roundup of just a few of the key learning points I walked away with today.

Lecture 1
The Future of Young Dentists - Dr Alun Rees
Alan is the president of the BDA western counties and is now "The dental coach" helping dentists across the country.
His presentation was mainly motivation and advice about how to stay ahead of the field. His top tips are:
1) Take responsibility for your own life
2) Dentistry is a marathon not a sprint
3) Put pts interests first
4) Be effective. You must be good at what you do
5) You need to be able to live and understand the business of dentistry
6) Choose your company wisely
7) Be humble
6) When you get to work leave your baggage at the door
7) Avoid arrogance
8) Take pride in what you do and wave the flag for good dentistry
9) Prevent yourself from burning out.
10) Keep evolving


Lecture 2
Risk Management in Dentistry - Dr Aubrey Craig from MDDUS
Respect pts right to make decisions
Do no harm
Do good
Be able to Justify your actions

Top tips about record keeping:
See photo

After the lecture I discussed consent forms and information sheets with Dr Craig particularly regarding the consent forms I created and shared last year. He stated, on behalf of MDDUS, that he would very much support dentists using such template forms. He said that you must make sure the form is personalised as needed for this patient by deleting unrelated items and adding or embellishing other points and must be understandable to the patient. Ideally also offering the patient sufficient time absorb and reflect upon the form, so offering a paper copy is recommended.
These forms can be found here:
http://www.drchrisharper.co.uk/blog/consent-forms-my-biggest-impact-post-of-2016


Lecture 3
Oral Surgery Complications - Prof Tara Renton
Communication is key. Remember that pts are anxious particularly regarding the association with the chair and pain. So they will not be able to take the info in. Therefore we should be doing what all other medical professionals do and only put the pt in the chair to examine or treat the pt. at other times they should be in a normal chair or a consultation room etc.

Pt safety:
Standardise, educate, harmonise
Reports of serious events isn't happening the way it should be so we cant learn from these events.


Lecture 4
Introduction to Dental Implants - Dr Nik Sisodia
Start with the end in mind. If you can learn how to restore implants you will be far better at the surgery.

People who have complete dentures have 1/6th the chewing capacity of dentate individuals

His opinion is that we are only 1 big legal case away from CBCT being the basic standard of planning involved with implants.

If you are not doing any restoring of implants then start working closely with a surgeon and get him to teach you to restore them. If things don't work then build another relationship with someone else.


Lecture 5
Updates in Paediatric Dentistry regarding safeguarding - Professor Richard Welbury
Ghandi "A nation can be judged on how it treats it's children"

45000 children at any one time who are at rims of suffering significant harm and are on child protection registers.
Disabled children are over 3x more likely to be subject to abuse and neglect.


Next years conference will be in Exeter. Whether you are a very new graduate or have been around for some time I would recommend you check it out.