Please note, these pages deal with the Leeds based VT Specialties and the educational requirements of Dentists and Dental Professionals in West, East and North Yorkshire. For details of the South Yorkshire provision go to the POSTEA site.
Welcome from the Dental Dean
Welcome to the website of the Yorkshire & Humber Postgraduate School of Dentistry covering North, West and East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. I hope you will be able to find the information you require on this website but if not please don’t hesitate to contact us and please do let us know how we can improve this website for you.
Whenever I update this website I constantly seem to be talking about change. The word change always seems to invoke a negative reaction in that people (including me) often feel ‘here we go again, more change’. However I feel many of these changes are for the good and so for the rest of this page I will refer to them as “developments”.
Dental Foundation (Vocational) Training:
Following the dental access issue in Scarborough some six years ago there has been significant developments in the number of undergraduates coming out of UK Dental Schools. This year there will be approximately 95 graduates qualifying from the Leeds Dental Institute compared with some 50 graduates last year. This trend is being repeated around the country and in addition there are 3 new schools which will soon be putting their graduates into the work place (University of Central Lancashire based in Preston, Peninsula Dental School based in the South East and Aberdeen Dental School). In addition there has been a significant increase in the number of GDC registered Dentists in the UK from 32,000 5 years ago to 36,000 now, primarily due to a significant number of non-UK Dentists joining coming to the UK particularly from Europe. Whilst this latter group are not required to undertake Vocational Training a small number of them are doing so and certainly all of the UK graduates are required to under take Vocational Training if they wish to work as a provider in the NHS. As a consequence we have had to increase our number of Vocational Training places nationally and in Yorkshire in 2009 we will increase our Vocational Training places form 48 to 60 with the expectation of increasing again to 72 in 2010. We are currently seeking Dental Practitioners who may wish to return to Vocational Training or try Vocational Training for the first time. We are happy to offer the training required to support Vocational Trainers. In addition Yorkshire & Humber Deanery has approximately £10million of capital money to be spent to develop the facilities in practices to allow them to increase the number of Vocational Trainees both in Medicine and in Dentistry.
Oral Surgery & Special Care Dentistry:
A further development in this Deanery is the establishment of Specialty Training in Oral Surgery and Special Care Dentistry. Preparations are being made now to advertise for a Training Programme Director in each of these Specialties to lead the development of the specialty locally. We already have well established training programmes in Restorative Dentistry, Orthodontics, Paediatric Dentistry, Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Dental Public Health, Oral Medicine and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery. The addition of the two new Dental Specialties will allow us to provide greater access for patients to specialist care.
Life-long Learning:
There have been significant developments in the area of Continual Professional Development. Very soon we will be sending out the planners for the courses from September 2009 to January 2010. Many of these courses are multi-professional and this Deanery gives a significant emphasis to courses for the whole Dental team. We also run a number of ‘Major Events’ and these have been very successful recently in the areas of professionalism, cross infection control, medical emergencies, oral cancer and a day of restorative dentistry with Mike Cassidy at the Yorkshire Playhouse. We are keen to keep the cost down for our dental nurse colleagues and to that extent we will usually charge dental practitioners the delegate rate that we are charged by the hotel/conference centre and we will subsidise the attendance for dental nurses and sometimes the dental hygienists and therapists. The speakers’ costs and other costs will be met by the deanery to allow us to provide you with as many courses as we can and with as low a delegate rate as possible. We also hope to hold these events at varying centres around the Yorkshire Deanery.
On behalf of the Deanery team and myself I urge you to let us have your feedback on any of the educational opportunities we provide for you. We are keen to provide the best possible education for the Dentists and Dental Care Professionals throughout Yorkshire and your views form a significant part of our quality assurance process.
paul.cook@yorksandhumber.nhs.uk.
Paul Cook
Postgraduate Dental Dean
(Yorkshire & the Humber Postgraduate Deanery)
June 2009