Make a stand

The British Dental Association is starting a new election cycle shortly with ballot forms being sent to dentists across the country. The act of ticking the box and returning the form will ensure that dentists from all spheres of the profession are represented during these turbulent times.

Committee representatives are required for GDPs, community dental services and hospital dentists, academics and those dentists working in the Armed Forces.

For as long as I have been involved with the BDA, people have asked me why I work with the association given all the other competing demands on my time both at home and in the practice. My answer to that tends to revolve around my experiences as a vocational trainee: this opened up opportunities to meet reps from various dental organisations, such as the General Dental Council, Dental Protection and the BDA, as well as attending events hosted by them. It was not long after this 'initiation' of sorts that I put my name forwards for election for the first time. A few of us had been grumbling in the back row that the people in these organisations did not represent us well at that relatively junior stage of our career: we wondered how they could, since they were so different to us in age and experience. We also felt we stood apart because we were the first cohort of dental students to go through dental school having to pay tuition fees without the benefit of student grants – instead we were saddled with large student loans that had to be paid back. In hindsight, of course, the fees we paid at that point were a fraction of those that will have to be paid by all students soon, but being the first group to do so we felt especially aggrieved.