An indication of just how far things have changed is the opening of a new state-of-the-art dental simulation unit at St. George’s Hospital, in Tooting, South West London.
The £350,000 facility creates an excellent learning environment for postgraduate clinical training for: year 1 (foundation dentists), year 2-4 (dental core trainees), specialists and consultants in training and general dental practitioners together with other members of the dental team.
The training suite includes 15 tutor/student work stations along with accompanying ‘phantom head’ simulators linked to video enabled surgical operating microscopes. Touch screen HD Smots technology further aids the teaching experience.
Furthermore, the high fidelity simulation training space is equipped with internet cameras offering live link teaching to the Maxillo-Facial Unit of the Hospital.
The dental team will be able to cut; shave, drill, fill and drill a variety of plastic teeth set with in the jaws of state of the art phantoms’ jaws and undertake surgical procedures on the work surface.
The suite will allow pig’s heads surgical courses, simulated model implant placement and oral surgical skills – such as bone plating. The room is fully equipped to allow practical courses in: root canal therapy, periodontics (gums), paediatric dentistry, orthodontics and prosthodontics.
Peter Briggs, foundation training programme director for south London and Consultant in restorative dentistry at St Georges Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “this is a step forward for this hospital which now offers some of the most modern dental training facilities in the capital’.
“We know that the UK undergraduate dental curriculum is very full. This means that there are gaps that need to be filled during early Foundation and Core training years. It is within simulation laboratories like ours that this development can take place in combination with clinical exposure.”
Clinical dentistry is difficult at the best of times and patient expectation has never been higher. UK dentists are now more at risk from litigation than most countries in the world (including the USA).
The successful bid to the London Strategic Health Authority reflects the hospital’s strong dental reputation and track record of postgraduate teaching.
Peter Briggs added: “Dentistry is still essentially a practical ‘skill-based’ profession. Rather like professional sport one needs plenty of repetitive skill-based practice (clinical and simulation hands-on experience) to produce predictable performance that holds up under pressure and in challenging clinical circumstances. The suite offers a safe learning environment where dentists can learn new techniques, fine-tune their skills and bench mark themselves against others”.