This Friday I head to the ADI Congress at the ExCel in London in what is now over 20 years of conference attendance for me.
I was asked to do a little talk in one of the side rooms by Craig Parker (this is his conference as President of the ADI) and I was happy to accept. This is to speak to, what it was hoped, would be a group of GDPs who are not interested in implant dentistry but would like to know the advantages of bringing implant dentistry into their practice for the benefits of themselves, their teams and their patients.
Initially I intended to head down on Thursday morning, stay for the whole thing with a speakers dinner and a conference social event, heading back on Saturday afternoon but as I worked through my return to work having been off for a considerable period of time in December and January, the huge commitment and time away, not just from my practice but from my family, seemed to become a larger and larger obstacle. In the end I’ll head down early Friday morning, speak at 4:40pm on Friday afternoon and head back on the train that evening.
As these things rise up in front of me it makes me question what they’re for, for me at least, and what benefit they bring to me. This is not a reflection of the ADI Congress at all, the first one of which I attended I think in 2001, it’s just a reflection on congresses and conferences in general.
Surely the point of these events is to make you better, to give you something that you can bring back to your day-to-day working like which improves you or it, but in particular improves what happens to your patient in the practice which must be the greatest benefit. More and more at all of the conferences whose agendas I look at I see less and less that I think I’m able to bring back. I think this is an expression of the maturity of the subjects that I study and how less and less changes over time.
I first attended one of these big conferences (excluding the BDA Conference) in 1999 at the ITI World Congress in Switzerland. I was amazed and overawed by the quality, diversity and technology that existed there and I thought it was a world way out of reach. Soon after I attended my first ADI Conference in Birmingham and I’ve been a regular conference attender over the decades since.
Things are definitely different now; the explosive expansion in implant dentistry has slowed down to a trickle. The days of 30% growth for implant companies, free bars for 72 hours in the middle of London and ice sculptures of implants are gone and a much more pragmatic approach has come to play. But the speakers are recycled time and time again. They’re a bit like football managers, there are only so many big names around, and when you try to straddle two organisations like I have with the ADI and ITI the names return again and again. The titles of their talks are different but the essence of their talks are the same.
This time around the ADI has tried to do something by including the public and GDPs who are not involved in implant dentistry in the programme. They are to be applauded at their inclusion of dental nurses in the programme and there’s a specific platform for technicians and also hygienists and therapists.
The truth is though that I think we need to be much more innovative in implant dentistry and truthful to ourselves about what we achieve. We need to provide practice-changing education, things that challenge and push people forwards to better places. Somewhere for us to all explore our boundaries in a safe, secure and well-evidenced manner. Perhaps though, it’s just the start of the end for me. Old age setting in! No more conference burn out, three or four days of heavy socialising and pretending to pay attention in lectures. I now fly in and out for the good bits!
Blog Post Number - 1212
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