Colin Campbell clears up the confusion over what to look for in an implant course.
An excellent implant course knows who it is directed at and what it’s trying to achieve.
Implant dentistry is commonly separated in straightforward, advanced and complex procedures and each individual course should address one of those areas of teaching and not try to appeal to all. It’s inappropriate to teach complex procedures to people who have not yet mastered straightforward implant procedures.
In an ideal world implant education would be full time for three years in a hospital environment providing surgical and restorative procedures and keeping a log book, but for general dental practitioners wishing to enhance their skills, this is not feasible and a more user-friendly modular approach to practical and academic learning is more realistic.
A good implant course
A good implant course will pitch itself at the correct level of straightforward, advanced and complex.
It will have a range of speakers with a breadth of experience to allow individual delegates to gain as much information as possible.
It will allow open and honest discourse, both at the course itself and between modules on an online platform where delegates can discuss (in a non-threatening way) cases of their own and individual issues to allow the group to learn.
It will provide practical implant experience, both on models but more importantly on patients and it will encourage delegates to source, assess and plan their own patients in their own practice.
It will give the opportunity for delegates to enter into a mentoring arrangement, which will enhance their skills further on completion of the course and it will identify where delegate’s shortfalls and shortcomings are and assist them to allow them to improve.
A format that provides one or two days per month of teaching, together with inter-module discussion and education and practical arrangements is the ideal option for starting out in straightforward implant dentistry for young practitioners.
More advanced and complex courses would come later in the pathway towards 50 implants placed per year and MScs to deepen the knowledge and understand research at a later stage.
For more information visit www.campbellacademy.co.uk.
