As I write this post I am returning home from lecturing at the ITI Study Club in Birmingham on a cold, November Wednesday evening after a full afternoon of clinical and a full morning of meetings at the practice.
It was a real rush to get here, in fact I was half an hour late and was running around part of Birmingham trying to find a taxi from the railway station I decided to come into. It was a stress to get back to the station on time to get the train at 8:50pm instead of 10:10pm hoping that I could get back to the house at some sort of reasonable hour to walk the dog and to get up in the morning to go for a swim (unlikely).
On the train I am trying hard not to submit to the risk of eating rubbish in the hope that when I get home there will be something proper to eat. I am also half way through a Facebook conversation with my friend and exceptional colleague from Edinburgh Peter Buchan about why I bother to do this.
The answer is quite clear, as I rushed out of the lecture having only had the chance to answer two questions - I do it for the interaction with the guys that come to listen. Even Steve Dover was at the lecture tonight, he is high level indeed, a Maxillofacial surgeon from Birmingham. I don't know why he turned up to listen to me on a night when he could've done a million other things but it was a privilege to see him there. My only regret for the evening is how late I arrived due to the stress of getting there and how quickly I had to leave, therefore not being able to say thanks to the guys for coming but also to enter into discussion with them about the jobs that we do that we love.
That is really the essence of what's going on and here's the point of what i'm writing about - when I went to see Seth Godin recently there were 300 people in the lecture theatre for four and a half hours worth of 'content'. He stood up at the start and said "question and answers for the next four and a half hours... question number one... go"
I think that would work as a new way to learn in implant dentistry or any sort of lecture. I know we have it beaten into us about the aims and objectives that we have to provide and the learning outcomes that we have to give but the pendulum has swung too far when we can't speak to someone who has a lot of experience in different areas and ask them for their views so that it triggers discussion in a peer review style group.
Tonights lecture was on complications, one of the best ways to discuss complication is to say "what have you seen and what have you seen?"
Perhaps going forwards we might put something out there for a question and answer session like Seth Godin did and if only five people turn up then it will be a nice little gathering.
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