For years I have been asked this question repeatedly, infact it is the most common question that I get asked when I lecture at the end of the lecture when people come up to me.
I have had the conversation regularly over the past few months on the telephone as people try to sift through the plethora of courses that are available and billed as being the ‘best thing to get people into implant dentistry’.
I am going to suggest a formula below and I believe that this is the correct way to do it. This assumes a couple of principles related to the clinician:
1. the clinician involved is keen to look after his patients properly and then ‘do no harm’
2. the clinician involved does not see dentistry as a gravy train set up solely to make them lots and lots of money and allow them to retire aged 40 to a boat in Monaco.
These provisos aside, I believe the way to being in implant dentistry in practice is to restore implants.
- Attend a creditable modular course, I would recommend the Foundation in Implant Dentistry Course by the ITI as this is hugely based on sound principles, good practice and restorative implant dentistry.
- Learn that the important aspect of implant dentistry is to put the implants in the correct place following a restorative plan.
- Hitch up with a reputable caring and empathic mentor who can help you through the first through years of your implant practice.
The Foundation in Implant Dentistry Course run by the ITI UK and Ireland Section http://www.itieducation.org is set up in entirely this way. It is a restoratively driven course with ethical speakers with huge experience who are keen to assist clinicians early in their implant careers. The ITI has a register of mentors around the country who can be allocated to individual FID members to allow them to progress on into their implant career in safety and with safety for their patients.
In the end this makes for a satisfying, rewarding career in implant dentistry which is also profitable but it doesn’t state profit first before quality or care.
Beginning a course in implant dentistry is at least a 5-year plan. The practitioners who call me up (and this has happened recently) to say the have been on a course, placed 20 - 25 implants - half of which have fallen out, and can’t understand why their sinus lifts are ineffective, are not going to cut it.
The very fact that people who have no surgical experience, other than general practice are performing sinus lifts after having only placed 10 - 15 implants is truly shocking.
Build the foundations strong and build the foundations deep and it will lead to a long and rewarding career in implant dentistry.
I commend the Foundation in Implant Dentistry Course to you.
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