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It was 1995 that I travelled to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham from my first ever job in dentistry in Scotland to be a senior house officer in head and neck surgery.

I was to work for Mrs Sheila Fisher, the first ever doubly qualified maxillofacial surgeon who was a woman.

There were many things about Sheila not to like, but it was obvious from the very start that she was swimming against the tide and trying to live in an environment where she was completely alien and foreign compared to the basically white Anglo Saxon Protestant male community where surgery was living at that stage.

The head of surgery was full of WASP’S (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and it's only as I look back now that I realise quite how overwhelming that must have been for someone like Sheila Fisher.

Of all the surgeons that I worked with, Sheila was certainly not the best and probably at the lower end of ability of all of the great surgeons that I ever saw, but she was obviously fighting on a day-by-day basis against an environment which was gamed against her.

As I look back now from that time in 1995 and my own journey through the ITI, first as a very junior educator and then secondly, as I would be invited towards membership (which was the early version of fellowship) and so then upgraded to fellowship in the early 2000’s, it was clear that the WASP world was still fully prevalent and in full effect at that stage.

When I say WASP, I basically mean white male and as I think back, all of the people I talk with (although many were not Protestants) were all white males. 

The three people who nominated and seconded me for fellowship (Jack Richardson, Philip Friel, and Larry Browne), all white males.

The people in all the early stages, Phil, Jack, Adrian, all white males.

And so, it seemed as you passed around implant dentistry (which was an extension of all of dentistry and all of surgery) it was dominated by that group.

Fast forwards to 2016 when Straumann teamed up with a group of talented clinicians to form the WIN initiative, which was one of the vision projects of Charlotte Stilwell, my long-term friend and colleague who became the first woman and first British clinician to hold the global presidency of the ITI.

Prior to Charlotte's appointment, every single president of the ITI had been a white male.

Now, for those of you who know me, I'm not a particular activist in any area of intersectionality, but I am passionate about bringing different people to implant dentistry and have been particularly passionate about the role of the woman surgeon.

I became particularly interested in this when I started to work with dental nurses in 2002 and realised that there was a huge untapped talent market among dental nurses in the United Kingdom which we have encouraged and emboldened and exploited in our own environment.

The simple transition on from this was to understand that women are different clinicians (in general) to male clinicians (in general). 

There is huge crossover, and this is a huge generalisation, but I have found that males are much more ego based than women clinicians and much less empathy based than women clinicians in general terms.

For these reasons, at least, it's massively important to encourage much better representation of women in implant dentistry, but in particular women in the surgical aspects of implant dentistry.

It's clearly important to encourage everybody from every background into these areas, but this is a specific example.

And so, watching the rise of WIN and the development of the Women's Implantology Network supported by Straumann but in conjunction with the ITI has been a wonderful thing to see.

Not least in this development has been to watch the advancement of Beatriz Sanchez, one of our own brilliant surgeons and young clinicians at the practice and then latterly and in the last few years, Angela Cowell, who has taken a lead role in this initiative to make it much better.

And so, on the 11th of May 2023 the Women Implantology Network in conjunction with the ITI will hold its first Congress in the United Kingdom at The Campbell Academy in Nottingham.

We have been delighted to be able to host this with WIN and to see Beatriz and Angela at the forefront of this brilliant initiative to bring women in implantology closer to parity with their colleagues throughout the profession.

The programme is amazing, and it's listed here and if you want to investigate WIN or to join, it's listed here.

But a few of the highlights are Kirstyn Donaldson (consultant and honorary senior lecturer in dental and maxillofacial radiology from Glasgow) presenting on CBCT, Lorna MacNab (consultant in restorative dentistry and senior clinical lecturer) discussing head and neck cancer rehabilitations using dental implants and Safa Somi (specialist in prosthodontics and senior clinical teaching fellow) talking about digital implant planning.

Our own dental nursing team will also be on hand for part of the practical to go through the production of printed surgical guides for guided surgery and Samantha Smith (one of the three new women's ITI fellows in conjunction with Safa Somi and Beatriz Sanchez) will be providing a talk with Angela Cowell on learning from complications.

I would encourage you to come to this.

Firstly, for the incredible content that's being presented, secondly, to see implant dentistry from another perspective and thirdly to support an initiative which will only make everything better.

We must be able to see the world through the eyes of others and in the podcast that I provided with Gurmit Samra, which is here, you can hear an explanation from someone who felt they would never be able to make it in a world of video production because they could never see anyone in that world that looked like them.

One of the first ways to make things better is to give people role models so they can see a path ahead that they too can follow, and WIN are doing and succeeding in doing this and I would encourage you to help them.

Maybe see you there.

Blog Post Number - 3384