This article critiques working in a regionally based versus a metropolitan practice in the early phase of your dental career, highlighting the adventures, advantages and pitfalls of each.

Hints and Tips Final year is a lot more relaxed than 4th year but still it doesn't mean that you don't need to do any work. Get your revision started in plenty of time as most of the clinics will not finish until half 4 or 5 so if you are on outreach then you won't get back home until quite a bit later. Time is precious so use it wisely.

You may think it unusual to be reading an article written by a chiropractor however, for the last 15 years I have been associated with the dental profession in various ways.

A pain in the neck and the back is not the way you want to perform in the dental profession. Too many of its professional members suffer unnecessarily whilst trying to apply their mix of clinical, business and communication skills whilst running a dental practice.

The Dental Council's guidance 'Professional Behaviour and Dental Ethics' states that a dentist has a duty to provide emergency treatment for their patients outside normal surgery hours and patients must be advised on how to contact the dentist should an emergency arise.

Patients are often prompted to visit the dentist because they have been experiencing pain or discomfort.

Every dentist has surely heard the old adage that if you have ten dentists and a patient in the same room, they will come up with ten different treatment plans for the same patient.

Many students have limited professional interview experience, so applying for a job as an FD can be a little scary. Your future rides on a 20 minute interview! So, how to maximise your chances of getting the job you really want? Let’s start by asking what a Trainer wants in an FD?

Top 5 Tips

There is never a bad time to review the way that you keep records of dental patient treatment.

Not only is the prevalence of tooth surface loss (TSL) increasing, but clinicians increasingly find themselves facing criticism and challenges regarding its diagnosis and management.

Sadly the dental surgery environment is not always conducive to effective communication. Often the dentist and other members of the dental team are dealing with a variety of patients, all with different needs, and they may be subject to severe time pressures.

There are many examples in clinical dentistry of treatment which is largely dependent upon the level of co-operation from the patient, and/or the degree to which the patient follows the advice and recommendations of the clinical team.

One of the advantages of keeping careful and detailed records of a patient’s pain history is that it highlights significant changes and developments in the features of the patient’s symptoms which can, in turn, lead the clinician to the correct diagnosis.

New techniques, new materials and perhaps more importantly, a shift in treatment philosophies in recent years has led to a greater emphasis upon minimally interventive, preventive approaches to the management of the early carious lesion. In some key respects new technology has helped, and in other respects it has hindered, this process. In a dentolegal sense, the most likely allegation would be that the clinician failed to recognise, act upon and appropriately manage the small or early carious lesion and as a result it was allowed to develop, causing pain and suffering together with the cost and inconvenience of more extensive (and more expensive) treatment.

People are living longer, and more people are retaining their teeth into later life. Consequently, the overall potential periodontal risk is rapidly increasing. Most allegations of undiagnosed, untreated and under-treated periodontal disease arise when a patient sees a new dentist for the first time. This may result from the retirement of the patient’s previous dentist, or simply because the dentist has left the practice. Sometimes the patient attends a different dentist in an emergency situation, or following the sale of the practice where they have been treated over many years.

In case after case, the question arises of what information a patient was given in advance of their treatment. Obviously, this is material to the quality of the consent obtained from the patient, and yet dentists, hygienists and therapists often find themselves unable to demonstrate with any certainty, exactly what the patient was told, when, and in what terms.

Dentists communicate with their technicians (and vice versa) in a variety of ways, and on a variety of subjects. Yet in the experience of Dental Protection, many valuable opportunities to improve the quality of these communications seem to be missed. Although there has to have been some dialogue, there is often little or no tangible evidence that this was so.

If you have just commenced foundation training read a personal perspective of the recruitment process and tell us about your own experiences of the system.

We believe that we are uniquely placed to appreciate the role that CPD can play in the areas of professional performance, patient safety and the quality of patient care.

All dentists practising in Wales must ensure that they have registered with Health Inspectorate before they undertake any private dental treatment.