New Year's Honours & Dentistry

New Year’s Honours & Dentistry

Three dental team members have been included in the New Years Honours list. This is the first of its kind from King Charles, and continues the tradition of recognising those who have served in a wide variety of roles.

Samantha Salaver, Head of Dental Nursing, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded the MBE for services to Dental Nursing. Samantha has worked at Guy’s Hospital since 2006. She joined the Trust as a sister in the dental directorate before becoming a dental matron and then head of dental nursing.

During her career, Samantha chaired the Association of Dental Hospitals dental nurses’ group, and she worked with NHS England to set up talent management for dental nurses. She also helped to set up the Dental Nursing Academy for apprentices at Guy’s and St Thomas’, and is currently developing a specialist dental nursing degree.

Samantha was involved in the response to Covid-19 when three quarters of the trusts dental nurses were redeployed help in the response to the pandemic. The whole team collectively won the Trust’s Dame Eileen Sills Award. The honour was given by Dame Eileen Sills, Chief Nurse at Guy’s and St Thomas’ to acknowledge the incredible contribution of the entire team during the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking about her award, Samantha said: “I was overwhelmed and surprised to hear that I was to receive such an honour as this. I work with an amazing team of dental nurses and others and have been privileged to be supported by Guy’s and St Thomas’. “I have had the opportunity to develop the future of dental nursing, and I am very proud to be a dental nurse.”

Mancunian, Mohammed Wakkas Khan has been awarded an MBE for services to Charity and to Young People and to Interfaith Relations. In general dental practice in Hyde, his career has covered the fields of healthcare, international diplomacy, education and community cohesion, and he has acted as an advisor for various government departments. Wakkas is currently the Chair of the Trustee Diversity Panel and a Governor of Manchester High School for Girls.

Wakkas, who qualified in 2004, founded Young Interfaith in 2017 in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena Bombing.  It isa national grassroots initiative that seeks to bring together young people of all faiths and none, to inspire them to collective social action. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2019 was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester.   He has previously worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Engaging With The Islamic World Group, and was a member of the Faith Advisory Panel of Experts to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as well as the government’s Preventing Extremism Together Taskforce.

On his Facebook page, he expressed his appreciation for the many good wishes and messages that he had received since the announcement, and that he was “Beyond humbled and overwhelmed”.

Retired dentist Harry Olmer BEM also received an MBE.  At the time of his retirement in 2013 at the age of 86 he was reportedly the longest serving dentist in the UK. However his honour was not for the years of service to patients, but for services to Holocaust Education in his work for the Holocaust Educational Trust. While Harry may have completed a long general practice career in Potters Bar, his story began in South West Poland in 1927. One of six siblings, the German invasion when he was twelve, would see the family’s expulsion, separation, and his forced labour in various concentration camps including Buchenwald. By the time that he was liberated from the Therezenstadt concentration camp in May 1945 he was very ill, and doubts that he would have survived more than a few days. His parents and three sisters had been killed in the camps.

Later in 1945, Harry was one of the 300 orphaned children from the camps allowed to come to the UK. Initially settled as a group in Windermere, Harry would later be sent to a hostel in Scotland, and then study at evening classes to become a dental technician. In 1948 he began the dental course at Glasgow University and went on to work as dentist in Germany during his national service. Later, he married and settled in Potters Bar where he would remain in practice for over 50 years.

In recent years working for the Holocaust Education Trust he has recounted his experience as a survivor as part of the trust’s educational work in schools, universities, and the community. In Harry’s words, as he says when speaking to school groups, "Hate is the most terrible thing you can possibly imagine".

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