I'm not from here; it's easy enough to tell. You just have to listen to me when I speak.
When I was in Paris last week, talking on stage, one or two people said they couldn't understand me because of my accent (as if someone from Paris doesn't have an accent).
I came here in August 1995. I drove down the motorway in a Peugeot 306, full of my whole life (and it wasn't even full). I pitched up at the hospital just for 12 months to have an adventure - it continues to this day.
By that stage, I'd already started my teaching career, presenting at one or two things at Glasgow Dental School as a house officer, and continued by doing a couple of little things as a senior house officer. Then, in 1997, when I came out into practice, I lectured to a VT group, even though I was a VT (DFT). I enjoyed it, and so I carried it on, and I'm somewhere at around about 2000 lectures, depending upon how you count it.
In 2014, Andy and I formed The Campbell Academy, and off we went, producing our own courses in-house.
In 2020, we built The Campbell Academy as part of The Campbell Clinic project, and I've now taught and educated thousands of dentists in many different ways.
Most of it, though, I've done in England, with some special events in different countries when I'm asked, but the majority of it has been in England, and the vast majority of that majority has been right here in Nottingham.
Throughout my career, though, I've had the chance to go home (hame if you're me), medical-legal work, ITI study clubs in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow several times, MSC teaching at Glasgow Dental Hospital in school, various other Engagements but this year we were given the opportunity to go home properly.
Working with our partners at Wrights and utilising the facility that they have in Dundee, we're launching the Scottish year course. It's our Year One Implant Course, exactly the same as the full Campbell Academy experience in Scotland, in Dundee, in a space within the Dundee facility that we have been gifted, that we can turn into whatever we need it to be. It will be extraordinary,
We looked at this, thought about it, and decided whether it was time to move on this or not (it's always been a dream or an ambition of mine to go home with this)
Dundee is fantastically placed because if we put the course in Glasgow, then people from Edinburgh or Dundee or Aberdeen would have to travel to Glasgow, and if we put it in Aberdeen, the same would apply, the same with Edinburgh. Dundee is equidistant between the three big places in Scotland, and it's a lot easier to travel there from Scotland than it is to travel to Nottingham.
The clinical days, though, will be in Glasgow at an exceptional practice that we're partnering up with, and the course itself will start at the end of October 2025.
This is only possible by our ability to engage Professor Colin Burns (my most Scottish of Scottish friends to be our clinical director of education for Scotland and Ireland - yes, Ireland will be next and quite soon. Watch this space!)
And so, in October, we begin the ITI-linked curriculum course, The Year Implant Course, the moving to 50 implants a year, the 5-year pathway, all of the extended education, all of the way we've done it and continue to do, only in Scotland.
To join our waiting list, please click here.
We'll also be at the Scottish Dentistry show on the 21st and 22nd of June; come and find us. Colin and I will talk to you there.
Look forward to seeing you.
Lang may your lum reek!
Blog Post Number - 4185