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Tomorrow is PESCAY day for me. 

PESCAY = Professionalism and Ethics Study Club all Years.

This group was set up by Professor John Gibson at the University of Glasgow some years ago as a chance to talk to dental students about ethical and professional issues.

It has become enormously successful and now spreads across all teaching years throughout the university. They put aside a Friday afternoon once a quarter for students to discuss and investigate issues of professionalism and ethics.

It’s so successful that they have to split it into years now, so tomorrow it’s the second and fourth year students plus some associated staff who want to come; they have the dubious honour of listening to me for two and half hours.

Let’s be clear, this is one of the greatest privileges I’ve ever had or have been asked to carry out in a career of wonderful privileges.

The chance to speak to dental students about the future of their careers, ethical issues and philosophical considerations is something that has consumed me now for weeks and weeks and weeks.

What would you say to that group?

The responsibility in this lecture is enormous (to me at least). Not only to instruct, but to inspire. Not only to empower information but to input enthusiasm.

Make no mistake, the people sat in front of me tomorrow afternoon will be the future leaders of society. They’re the best chance we’ve got of making a better go at things than we’re at the minute, both in our profession and in society overall.

The sections of the talk were set last year.

I have to do a bit of an introduction and talk about my journey in dentistry, from 8,500 days ago as a student in Glasgow to where I am now. I’ll introduce them very briefly to implant dentistry and then talk about ethics as it relates to implant dentistry (in my view). I’ll talk to them about my FTP case and things that I learned from there, my ideas of education in dentistry and finally how to go about selecting a dental implant system in the future.

In a couple of weeks these fourth-year students will go to an implant fayre set up by the University of Glasgow to talk to different dental implant companies. The idea of having me there is to give them some sort of ethical guidance and how to go about chatting to these guys at the early stages of their career.

As always there will be books (I always do books – I’m nothing if not predictable). I’ll revise my blog post from some years ago of suggested books for dental graduates and I’ll give some away on the day. I’m nervous about this, nervous and excited. I suppose that’s how it should be given this level of responsibility.

Privilege always comes with a price. 

Blog post number: 1561