This is the question that we might get asked the most in The Campbell Academy from dentists thinking about starting a training pathway.
The answer to this is… yes, some of it.
All one-year dental implant courses should be designed as foundation courses, giving you the basis of straightforward implant dentistry and allowing you to assess your own skills and abilities. Obviously, there are a range of capabilities of people who attend year-long courses with a range of experience, but on leaving a year-long course you should be competent at assessing and executing straightforward cases (example upper right second premolar with significant bone volume and not of high aesthetic demands). What you will gain more of on a one-year course, is you will move from ‘unconscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious incompetence’. This means you will begin to know what you don’t know, and therefore be able to avoid the cases where you would get into extreme difficulty with a lack of knowledge and understanding.
After a one-year course, if you move into a mentoring arrangement with an experienced practitioner, you can learn extensively from discussing cases and discussing why they would suggest you take them, and why you wouldn’t. This is one of the most important ways to learn, and the most important way to learn case selection. Also, debrief and reflect on cases with your mentor, when things have gone well and when things haven’t.
A one-year course is not enough to catapult you into the realms of some of the most experienced implant clinicians that you will ever see, but it’s certainly a start, and an essential start in understanding the basics, both in terms of the science, the theory and the practical skills. It will also help you understand how much more you need to learn and how you need to go about it.
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