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How will we measure the successes and failures of the new year? Kevin Lewis suggests some answers and points to some challenges. Albert Einstein knew a thing or two, but if every quote attributed to him was correct and accurate, he wouldn’t have had any time left for physics. But who cares? A good quote…
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Tempus fugit: Kevin Lewis offers his seasonal retrospective on the year’s successes and failures, arrivals and departures, events and non-events. Any reader who is sad enough to have read (let alone remembered) my column here a month ago, may remember that it started and ended with the phrase ‘sod it’. You could be forgiven, then,…
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Do we really reap what we sow? Kevin Lewis examines whether or not the old proverb is right. Sod it. And I mean that in a constructive, horticultural kind of a way, rather than in any defeatist or exasperated sense. Although on reflection that might change before we reach the end of this column. We…
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Discussing the state of NHS dentistry, Kevin Lewis ponders the relative merits of too much, too little, and things we are told too often. Fifty years ago, the Japanese engineering and manufacturing boom was at its height in many industries and the revolutionary ‘just in time’ (JIT) production and supply chain concept made famous by…
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Brave new world?: Kevin Lewis suggests that the future is not made any brighter by ignoring lessons from history. It is 92 years since Aldous Huxley described a future world that suffered the consequences of having become too dependent upon science and technology (and also too trusting and blind to its risks), and which devalued…
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The law of unintended consequences is alive and well, Kevin Lewis discovers, as he explores the complexities surrounding the proposed reforms to ease the NHS dental workforce crisis. It is blindingly obvious that no government (of any complexion and whether central or devolved) can hope to resolve the current NHS dental access crisis without a…
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We may already be unwilling participants in the latest of a long line of historic workforce miscalculations, Kevin Lewis discovers. But are the clues in the past, the present or the future? Aficionados of Star Wars will no doubt shudder at my shameless purloining of the timeless adios made famous by Obi-Wan Kenobi. But there…
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It may well be true that the best things in life are worth waiting for… but this is not one of them. Kevin Lewis begins his recovery from the long-awaited dental recovery plan. You could almost taste the embarrassment of ministers and other government spokespeople when they had to front up to the nation with…
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It may be a time for contemplating the future, but Kevin Lewis suggests that we shouldn’t ignore the clues and problems from the past. Welcome to mensis ianuarius, as they used to say in Rome – the month of January. The Romans used a 12-month lunar calendar but settled on the wizard wheeze of a…
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Kevin Lewis examines why patients, dentists and the government all want to control the frequency of attendance. ‘Do you come here often?’ Probably not the most original chat-up line, I grant you, but a question which keeps cropping up in discussions about the delivery of primary care dentistry. I participated in a lecture series 35…
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Kevin Lewis discovers that, in NHS dentistry, new ideas and new solutions appear to be in very short supply. The government’s green credentials may be in a state of flux – especially after its better-than-expected outcome in the recent Uxbridge and Ruislip by-election – and Labour is clearly bristling at the one that got away…
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It may or may not be true that everything you read (or post) on a website or social media is not wholly supported by fact, discovers Kevin Lewis. Or then again, it might be. I wouldn’t claim to be a mediaeval scholar, but I like to think that I know the difference between a mendacium…
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Kevin Lewis is excited to discover that he has a pronoun and a noun, and heads off in search of things that he can be offended by. I was sitting on a train a few months ago, and my ears pricked up at the mention of the word ‘dentist’ emanating from the seats behind me. …
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It would take the mother of all sticking plasters to fix the NHS – and it has been tried many times, but maybe NHS dentistry is part of a different NHS that the politicians forgot to tell us (and the public) about, Kevin Lewis wonders. I expect we’ve all heard the joke about the traveller who…
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‘Like all good Christmas stories and melodies, it will probably bring a tear to the eye – but for all the wrong reasons’: Kevin Lewis provides the festive soundtrack for the dental profession. As we approach another Christmas and the sound of festive carol singers drifts from street to street and door to door through…
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Kevin Lewis explains why recent seismic events in Westminster have been overshadowing subtle changes happening behind the scenes. When somebody finally writes the book describing the events in British politics over the last few months, it’s going to be a struggle to decide whether it belongs on the ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction’ shelves. While it’s true…
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Don’t believe everything you hear via social media, chatrooms and the professional grapevine, warns Kevin Lewis. Just because the GDC gets a decision wrong doesn’t make everybody else right. I don’t know whose original truism I am purloining and misquoting here – my apologies. ‘Comedy of errors’ was an option, but what follows is not…
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In the 1960s – 1980s, the NHS system actively encouraged dentists to save and restore teeth, thereby creating today’s ‘heavy metal’ generation, explains Kevin Lewis. Yet the NHS is conveniently ignoring its ongoing responsibility to these patients, and abandoning them to an uncertain future. Something was stirring in the 1960s and 70s, which is still…
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Farmers and dentists have more in common than you’d think, explains Kevin Lewis. Both suffer the financial consequences of inadequate government policies. I was grafting away on this column, when I was distracted by hearing an interview on TV in the background. The interviewee was saying that in 30-plus years in the business, he had…
