Urgent plea for patients in Aberdeen
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- Published: Monday, 24 March 2014 08:06
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Dental students at Aberdeen dental school risk failing their final year due to a shortage of patients on whom to practise. The school has twice written to local dentists appealing for them to refer patients to alleviate a potential training crisis. A lack of volunteers is reported to be putting students' degrees at risk.
In a letter dated January 9, Aberdeen Dental School's department of paediatric dentistry wrote to local dentists requesting child referrals. This was followed up on February 26 by a letter saying the school needed adults requiring work on crowns, bridges and dentures, as well as "children in need of all forms of restorative work". It comes four years after the new £17.7 million centre was opened by First Minister Alex Salmond, who promised it would deliver a significant increase in the number of NHS dentists.
Pat Kilpatrick, director of the British Dental Association in Scotland, said: "Dentists are effectively competing for patients as it is, so it's inevitable that there are fewer patients to go round and they're not going to be referring them away to the dental school."
Recently students at Glasgow University's dental school raised similar concerns about a shortage of available patients.
The problem in Aberdeen
is the fact that as well as opening a new dental school to increase the numbers of graduates in the region, the local Health Board simultaneously doubled the numbers of dentists in the region with aggresive recruitment to the region, including funding a £3 million giveaway to open new SDAI practices. One mechanism or the other may have been sensible, but both policies at the same time...madnessAberdeen Dental School
It was in 1995 that Edinburgh closed its dental school following a decision of the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1989 to rationalise the number of dentists in the UK. Edinburgh had a site earmarked for the new school and sufficient funds. As a dentist who trained at Edinburgh I can't remember any time there were insufficient patients for students to practice upon.You need to be logged in to leave comments.
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