Sebastian Evans

Regular readers of our articles will know that, as far as we are concerned, image is king. The image that your practice conveys is what attracts patients and keeps them, and ultimately affects the success of your business. This is a somewhat controversial point of view in this sector. Many dentists would rather believe it…

When down on the farm, rule one is ‘always remember to shut the gate’. The whole purpose of gates is to allow some things to pass through, while effectively excluding others – or at least, to impose some control over the rights of passage. On the other hand, cattle grids are the result of some…

When assessing the potential career options that are on offer within a profession like dentistry, it is easy to dismiss them as pretty limited. After all, you decided to study dentistry because you wanted to become a dentist, so surely the questions stop there? Well, not quite. The dental industry is dynamic and innovative and…

Dental implantology provides the modern-day clinician and patient an alternative treatment option in a patient’s oral rehabilitation. Since the inception/provision of early osseo-integrated dental implants, this science has had to evolve continuously as increasingly more is known about how differences in implant length sizes, implant surfaces and materials can contribute to good long-term success and…

Media star René Caryol headlines this year’s eagerly awaited Private Dentistry National Conference. Tickets are still on sale for the event being held at the Russell Hotel in London next Thursday (27 November). With a line-up featuring some of the profession’s biggest hitters, the conference promises to be just as useful for those already in…

In July of this year, the Dental Council of Ireland updated its Code of Conduct in relation to public relations. I hope that you received your copy. If you didn’t, you can download it from the www.dentalcouncil.ie website. In essence, there are three key changes from the previous code:1. The publication of a practice brochure…

The term minimal intervention (MI) is relatively new in dentistry and has been introduced to suggest that the profession should move away from its current approach to the treatment of dental caries. It is now widely accepted that caries is a bacterial infection and cannot be treated by surgical means alone. The modern approach to…

I’ve written in the past of how important communication is in the dental practice. The pursuit of improving all methods of communication is predicated on having something to communicate in the first instance. In this month’s article I have decided to concentrate on the current status of the IDA, how it needs to communicate with…

As I reflect over the last year as a VDP and the first year of my dental career, I once again feel a little nostalgic. The things I have learned, the experience I have gained and the people I have come to know have made such an impression on me and my career (although not…

How did you become involved with the dental industry?I left school at 16 and got a job as an apprentice dental technician. I left after qualifying and went into retail management, but then came back to dentistry as a rep 12 years ago. What is it about the industry that has kept you so long?The…

Q. Can you give us three examples of how the Peninsula Dental School differs from other dental schools?A. The first major difference is that our students learn within the NHS primary dental care environment. Our students see exactly the same sort of patients as an NHS dentist. We believe that this is important because it…

In the last article, I considered some of the general thought processes we need to go through before deciding whether or not to regenerate periodontal tissue in a previously diseased mouth with a non-responding tooth site. Now I want to go into more detail about the specific nature of the process involved in successfully restoring…

Pity the poor old public. In a world of information overload, the ability to sift it, interpret it and truly understand it becomes increasingly elusive. If the US elections teach us anything at all (and what is a hockey mom anyway?), it is the power of presentation and the ever-present danger that it will prevail…

As extraordinary as it may sound, your desire to become more involved with implants could actually be hindered by your dental training. Since we are taught to be experts in clinical procedures, we don’t graduate from dental school as experts in understanding patient emotions and desires. The truth is that presenting treatment for implants is…

Dental surgery clinical skills in almost all dental schools around the world get the operator to work around the phantom head. Unfortunately the skills that develop usually have the operator working in a distorted posture. They fail to utilise four-handed chairside ergonomic principles, placing all members of the dental team at risk of working in…

There are two things that dentists are generally noted for: saying ‘open wide’ and asking questions when their patients are unable to answer. Why is this, I wonder? I spend most of my time asking patients to close their mouths because without my saying anything they open as wide as they can (bless their hearts),…

The KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) concept applies to dentistry as much as to any other business. In a busy general practice, from answering the telephone to scheduling appointments, from accepting payment through welcoming and seating patients in the chair up to the complex procedures we undertake, everything we do should follow this principle. Some…

How did you become involved with the dental industry?Having lived in France for a year as an undergraduate, I became interested in working for a French company, and wanting a career in the dental industry, Septodont was the company of choice. What is it about the industry that has kept you so long?No two days…

The jury is still out on the question of what (in particular) prompted the Department of Health to release the story in mid-October that dentists were recalling healthy patients more often than was really necessary and ‘playing the system’ in order to pick up UDAs for little or no extra work. Given that the enhanced…