Sebastian Evans

Dental plan customers will be selling what they bought into at this year’s BDTA dental showcase. Practice Plan has invited some of its customers to be alongside staff and chat to fellow dental professionals at the stand at this year’s trade event in Birmingham. A spokesperson from Practice Plan said: ‘Why listen to us, when…

Here, the latest dates to book in your diary… The art of endodonticsDr L. Stephen BuchananFriday 23 October 2009, London Last chance to bookBy attending this seminar you will discuss cutting safe, effective access cavities; negotiating root canals to their terminal points, and accurate determination of canal length. These must be accomplished at a high…

A recent study reveals that if dental clinicians had proper training in talking to children’s parents it would reduce rates of kids developing early childhood caries (ECC) or cavities by 77%. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) found that if paediatricians were given proper communication, educational and information technology tools and training it…

A team from a dental practice took a leap from 10,000 feet to raise funds for charity. Dentist Dave Stephens and dental nurses Ali Wilks and Hannah Wakefield, from Chipping Manor Dental Practice in Wotton Under Edge, Gloucestershire, took part in the skydive and added to the practice’s £60,000 raised for the Bridge2Aid charity. Bridge2Aid,…

The British Association of Dental Nurses has appointed a new admin assistant. Katie Ball, 19, has joined the team at head office which currently consists of chief executive Pam Swain, membership administrator Shirley Wetherley and front office administrator Christine Cass. Katie, from Thornton in Lancashire, will be responsible for the administration of the Corporate Affiliate…

The British Association of Dental Nurses (BADN) fear the cost of the Government’s vetting and barring scheme will hit members’ pockets hard. The scheme – rolled out this month – is an attempt to prevent paedophiles gaining jobs or voluntary roles which give them access to children or vulnerable adults. Anyone in regular contact with…

Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to new research. The Cardiff university team studied almost 17,500 participants people is the first into effects of childhood diet on adult violence. The study found that 10-year-olds who ate sweets daily were significantly more likely to have…

I’m living on station at RAF Cranwell [in Sleaford, Lincolnshire] so I’m in surgery within 10 minutes. I was an aircraft technician, but I’d been doing that for 15 years and was looking for something else. I saw on the ‘station notices’ that the RAF was opening up the dental hygienist role to all trades…

A comprehensive training programme is the most effective means of preparing staff to address disruptive behaviour or assaults. There are, however, some basic steps that all staff members can take to improve their interventions in potential crisis situations. The points mentioned here are not intended to replace training, but rather to provide an overview of…

Dental nurses, are you involved in the fight against the further spread of the pandemic influenza H1N1 (swine flu)? Are you protecting yourselves, your families and those in your care? Dental nurses should act ethically in this matter to prevent and to minimise the spread of influenza. They should take into account their professional duty…

ough times both require and produce outstanding leaders. Winston Churchill in WWII and Nelson Mandela overseeing the birth of a post-apartheid South Africa are two examples. The essence of great leadership, from the aforementioned to John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, has been the ability to distil and communicate the message necessary to get…

Back in August, an article appeared in the GP magazine Pulse about salaried GPs considering splitting from British Medical Association (BMA). They threatened to go off and join the BMA’s smaller rival, the Medical Practitioners’ Union. Sessional GPs – the equivalent of dental associates – were determined to end what they saw as the ‘inherent…

Before Facebook and the internet, there was Radar. I should explain, perhaps, that I am referring here not to the electronic wizardry that gave the allied war effort a crucial edge in the 1940s, but to the bespectacled and omniscient marvel on two legs that formed part of the MASH team (the 4077th Mobile Army…

Which of us hasn’t quietly consulted the Business Link website for information about making an employee redundant? Or read, with more than usual interest, the scheduled rise in the weekly limit for calculating statutory redundancy pay? Fortunately, redundancies in dental practices are rare – but they are not unheard of.Of course, the person affected suffers…

The difference between good results and great results is often directly related to the ability to bring all the disciplines in dentistry together for the benefit of our patients. Interdisciplinary cases, by definition, are those cases that require interdependence among the specialties. The challenge in dentistry today, with the geometric explosion of knowledge, is to…

There has long been an inherent flaw in most of the ways in which dentists are remunerated for their services. Many of them are barking mad in terms of the perceptions, incentives and rewards they create, and despite countless attempts over many years, we still haven’t found a way of paying dentists fairly and in…

I have been hoodwinked and I don’t like it. When the Steele report was published in June, the secretary of state told the profession and the NHS that he accepted the recommendations of the report. He said his Department intended to ‘work closely with the NHS and the profession to pilot the recommendations’. I have…

The media has once again been preoccupied with the NHS, this time to defend it against vituperative attacks from US Republican opponents of President Obama’s public health reform proposals. As has been pointed out, it is okay for us Brits to grouch about the NHS, but no foreign persons are allowed to join in this…