A long time ago, Scottish dentistry went private, at least in the very north of Scotland.
It was back in the nineties, and I don't have the whole story behind this. Perhaps others who read this will have a better insight, but I remember the inception of the Highland Dental Plan when almost all of the dentists in the north of Scotland decided that what the NHS was doing was not right for them or their patients and they went independent.
They set up a Cooperative of dentists; they got together and set their own plan.
I'm sure there were some dissenters, but they were pretty solid as a group, and away they went.
Nowadays, they get together, and they meet regularly; they have people come and speak to them, and they share their troubles and worries in social meetings face to face.
There will be online stuff, too, but essentially, they still exist as a face-to-face organisation.
There are now many similar organisations around the country, although there may not be one near you, or you might not go and see it.
Gloucestershire Independent Dentist is another; it's the most extraordinary one I've ever seen, and I have not been there since around 2016.
But today, I spoke to Lothian Independent Dental Practitioners, a similar model to that of Highland Dental Plan, a group of practitioners combined together for the benefit of their patients and the practices.
A wonderful group of people, friendly and kind, all with the best interest at heart.
I spoke to them all day about dental business with a little bit of ridge preservation, but what strikes me about these groups all the time is that they are kind of how they used to be.
Every Wednesday, I used to travel down to Loughborough in Leicestershire to the university there for the East Midlands British Dental Association meeting.
At times, there were between 200 & 250 dentists at that meeting because there was a lot going on and a lot of change (It seems like small potatoes now, but it seemed a lot, then).
And so, everyone would meet, and there would be one or two speakers, and you would see your friends and colleagues that you knew, and you would go to the bar afterwards and have a cup of tea or a beer, and you would talk about all the shit that was going on, and you would feel better because you weren't alone; you understood that most of the things you were worried about were what most of the things that other people were worried about.
We lost this, didn't we? In a massive way, I think it's time to get it back; I think it's long past that time, but I'm not quite sure how it goes.
We have and are trying our best. We have 21 meetings next year at the practice, which are all effectively free to come to, but still, it's almost impossible to get people out because I know their legs are too scattered and busy.
But if you just picked one or two things to do, a Lothian Independent dental practice meeting or a Gloucester Independent dentist or a BDA meeting or meetings at our place or whatever you did, you would find and meet people who understood the pain you're going through, who understood the challenges that you find and how difficult it is to balance and you would feel better because you would have shared your problem and it would have halved.
Time to get this going again because if we don't, I don't know what comes next.
Blog Post Number - 3985