South-West BDA Young Dentist Group holds its third annual conference

On the 18th of February the South-West BDA Young Dentist Group held its third annual conference. Each year this conference alternates between Bristol and Exeter. This year it was held in Bristol. This provided several members of the year 3 cohort the opportunity to assist in the running of the conference with current committee members, last Saturday.

Our first role of the day consisted of signing in speakers and sponsors as they arrived at the conference. Later on we distributing feedback forms amongst the audience for each talk given. We were fortunate enough to able to sit through the conference from beginning to end, as well as helping ourselves to the hot buffet lunch and unlimited hot drinks – any students dream!

From left to right undergraduate dental students Malaaika Al-Koky, Michelle Cham, Rachel Botrugno, Nisha Patel, Jack Dowling.

This conference included big names in the field of dentistry including the Professor Welbury. Recognise that name third years? Yes, that’s Welbury as in the author of the ‘Paediatric Dentistry’ the CDH tutorials pre-reading text book! He provided the final lecture of the day (“Updates on some of the latest teachings in Paediatric Dentistry”) which included eye opening statics about the population of children living in the UK.

“Introduction to Dental Implants and their maintenance” was delivered by Dr Nik Sisodia. Dr Sisodia discussed how he approaches patients who have minimal bone support and patients that smoke. He mentioned that these patient are not favourable cases for implants, but rightly so they need to be treated and there are members in the field willing to help them, like Dr Sisodia himself. It was great to see his case photos, the classic before and after shots. These highlighted the impact, as the next generation of dentists, we can make in our own future careers. Even if we are not the practitioners to place the implants, we should know how to monitor them. This aspect was also explored in this lecture.

It was a great to see a female dentist take the stage and cover a wide range of topics linked to oral surgery in a lecture titled “Oral Surgery complications management and latest updates”. Professor Tara Renton provided us with an insight into how she ensures her patients know all of the risks linked to local anaesthetic and extraction before they commit to a procedure, as to obtain valid consent. The risk of nerve damage, particularly with those nasty wisdoms and the inferior alveolar nerve, was also discussed. I don’t know about the others but I will definitely take these points with me to my next oral surgery rotation.
Other talks given included:

“The future of young dentists” – Dr Alun Rees
“Risk Management in Dentistry” – Dr Aubrey Craig (Lecture sponsored by MDDUS)

The lecture provided were fast paced yet very informative, even for our current stage of dentistry in dental school. It was definitely worth its additional (voluntary) 8am start, regardless of the fact it was at the weekend! I recommend it to all if we are ever given the opportunity to be part of this again.

 

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