Part of my job now on a day to day and week by week basis, is to try to see if our business and our organisation is still heading in the right direction for where we want to be 10 and 20 years from now.
That becomes difficult, wrapped up in the day to day when someone knocks on your door and says, ‘there's a patient downstairs who's bleeding’ or a patient complains about the treatment that's been provided by you or someone else or many members of your staff are off sick or your worried if you've got enough money?
But it is the most important job for me moving forwards, and I have to create time to be able to do this or else, well, what's the point really?
And so, one of the things we've worked on for the past 12 months, and in particular with myself and Beatriz Sanchez at the clinic, is a new pathway for education for the Campbell Academy, and I'd like to just ‘soft launch’ or ‘tease out’ what's happening here.
At the start of this year, we were introduced to the prospect of integrating the ITI curriculum into our own teaching structure at the Academy.
And so, we looked at this with interest because as many of you will know, I've been an ITI guy since 1999 and it's an organisation that changed my life.
While the ITI is a brilliant organisation there are aspects of it that needed and do need modernising, but I think that’s happening and being worked on really well.
It is a brilliant global connection of committed individuals who are invariably honest and ethical and desperate to make a change and so the chance to partner up and embed the curriculum has been developed for a global community seemed like a brilliant opportunity.
None of this stuff happens easily, and none of it happens without an extraordinary amount of hard work and thought and vision on behalf of the people who are involved.
And so, it has taken an extraordinary amount of time (particularly for Bea) to get to the point where we’re integrating it into our year one cohort starting next year.
But this was not simply bringing in some extra digital resources for our first-year implant course, it was redesigning a pathway allow people to become excellent implant surgeons and restorative dentists over the next 5 to 10 years.
And so, we have designed a five-year process where people can access three years of formal education, which is certificated through the ITI foundation level certificate at Year one, the Intermediate Certificate at Year two and the ITI diploma at year three.
It means that people who leave the course successfully with the ITI diploma at the end of three years will have an internationally recognised qualification at one of the highest levels of implant dentistry to show to be excellent practical clinicians.
I think that's what we're all looking for in qualifications other than becoming great researchers or great data analysts (which is absolutely fine, if that's what you want to be).
One of the other things we've integrated here is the opportunity to take breaks through the three-year process, and so the course is set up so that it's possible to complete over five years without any financial disadvantage, so you can go for our year one, take a year out to embed your knowledge in practice and go back to year two, take another year out and then return to year three or any combination of the above.
It’s also linked in with our amazing online discussion portfolio and groups and the ability to come face to face to meet regularly and to place dental implants in a safe environment to get you off the ground.
When it gets to year three, people will have the opportunity to attend three world class master classes with clinicians from the University of Zurich, then from the University of Geneva and then from Turin.
Watch this space for what's happening next, but this is, for us, the development of a modern education pathway to set us forwards for the next 10 years.
I hope you'll come with us and if you're interested in any more information, just hit reply to this blog or the email for the academy's here.
Blog Post Number - 3304
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