Tenth anniversary for Peninsula Dental School marks innovations in dental education and care

Key to our success is interactive communication with the communities in which our DEFs sit – and I believe that a closer relationship with local communities will be one significant and seismic requirement for the profession going forward. This extends too to the wider health provision community – from CCGs and local trusts, to local authorities who have taken on the mantle of public health delivery.

We achieve this closeness via our award-winning Community Engagement Team, which not only builds positive relationships with a wide variety of groups with need within the community, but which also arranges and oversees our Inter Professional Engagement (IPE) programme.

This embeds our students firmly in the community and sees them run projects with local community groups and their users. The projects are designed to address specific oral health requirements and over the years have resulted in changes to policy, approach and methods of care.

This is why we are training dental professionals who will increase capacity in this environment - by tying them in to community engagement, we are also paving the way for dental professionals who can use the community around them to identify need, make early diagnoses and so have impact on oral disease prevention.

Having in no small measure achieved this with our undergraduate students, we are developing a range of post-graduate and professional qualifications open to local primary care dentists.

In order to target resources and be strategic about local investment, and the efficient and effective use of NHS resources, in 2013 we incorporated the DEF and community engagement programmes within the Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise. The social enterprise model is one which lends itself to dental primary care and one which we see as an important tool for dental professionals to use in the future.

As well as the pressure for change coming from an ever-shifting NHS, both we as a profession and the NHS itself are having to adapt to the needs of changing patient demographic.

The future is an ageing population who are living with their teeth for longer – the so-called “heavy metal” generation. These are people who have received complex dental work including dental implants.

With age also comes an increase in the amounts and variety of prescribed medication (polypharmacy) which often results in oral side effects such as dry mouth. This in turn results in an inability to maintain oral hygiene with subsequent risk of dental disease.

Add to this other conditions which come with age, such as dementia and reduced dexterity and mobility, and dental professionals now and in the future are presented with patients who present complex and in some cases new care challenges.

This is what awaits the profession in the future, and this is why there is a constant need to innovate the way in which we train the dental professionals of tomorrow – a challenge which is bread and butter to the team here at Peninsula.