Crowning Glory for Dental King

The Dental Clinical Skills Competition to discover the UK's best undergraduate dentist reached its climax at the Grand Final in Edinburgh last week. Run by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (https://www.rcsed.ac.uk/) Britain’s oldest surgical Royal College, and Dentsply Sirona (www.dentsplysirona.com) the competition, now in its fourth successful year, was won by 25 year-old Joe Reid, who grew up in Penrith and is now studying at the University of Newcastle, after a punishing series of tests designed to push the finalist's skills to the maximum.

He said, "I’m quite surprised to have won today, there are a lot of talented people here and it’s not something I was expecting.

“It was quite a novel experience competing in the Dental Skills Competition. You don’t really compete with each other normally at dental school and you don’t see the quality of other people’s work. There were a lot of different challenges today that we don’t normally come across too. I think the best part of the competition was spending time with people from other dental schools, as they’re people you wouldn’t normally meet.”