From a long, long time ago, my vision of what implant dentistry education would look like was a three-year practical-based course with extraordinary teaching showing people how to become complex practitioners.
I never saw that anywhere in implant dentistry worldwide, and I never saw providers committed to this.
It's not the same as a master's because a master's is an education degree in research, and it centres around the production of a dissertation in year three in every single format that I've ever seen.
Sure, in a master's, you can be taught by brilliant people and shown brilliant things, but it's just not as practical as it needs to be to catapult people into their implant career and towards the complex level of the scale.
And so, years ago, we started with our Year Implant Course to get people started at a straightforward level but understood that we needed digital adjuncts to education, additional material, lecture-based, practical based and live surgery-based treatment.
When we survey our delegates from our year one course, we know that 85% or more are placing implants at two years, which is a massive increase from the 7 to 10% that used to be the case on industry-sponsored courses.
And so, following on from that, after the first few years of success, we started a Year Two Implant Course to take people from straightforward at year one into advanced implant treatment.
We subscribe absolutely to the ITI's concept of straightforward, advanced and complex implant dentistry and therefore educate on that basis.
The Year Two Implant Course was very innovative for its time (and I think it still is).
You can pick and choose from a menu of Live Skills Courses which suit the place you are in your development and come back later to complete the rest when you move further along.
You can do CBCT Live Skills, Sinus Grafting, Aesthetic Life Skills (this should be for everyone, I think) and Immediate Full Arch Reconstruction together with specific teaching days related to advanced implant dentistry and all aligned with our extraordinary platform for collaboration and education that everyone uses through all the year courses.
Now it's time, though, to add the cherry on the top and the final touch, which is the Year Three Implant Course or effectively a TCA' fellowship'.
This course brings together practitioners of advanced level to take them to a complex level, learning from us and learning from themselves and learning from some world-class educators.
The platform this course will exist upon will be extraordinary, with a specific case to be discussed, analysed, picked apart and debriefed every month, which will take people to a much higher level of understanding of implant dentistry, including complication management and complex treatment provision.
The Master Classes will be world-class.
In 2024, we have speakers from Geneva, Zurich and Turin to provide extraordinary levels of education through restorative and technical implant dentistry, surgical implant dentistry and soft tissue management.
Add this to the platform of the cases and the collaboration with the group, and the interaction with the coaches and educators, and we believe it will be the most extraordinary of educational experiences.
This should lead to delegates being prepared to sit the ITI diploma, one of the newest and most innovative qualifications in implant dentistry.
The Curriculum in Implant Dentistry, as we've called our three-year program, is also innovative from the point of view that you don't have to do it one year after another, and you can accept the financial advantage of doing three years over five years, taking gaps where you like.
In year one, you'll sit the first stage of the implant certificate for the ITI and in the second, the intermediate certificate moving to and preparing for the ITI diploma at the end of year three (whenever you choose, that is).
It's one of the most exciting developments in our implant provision ever, at least since launching our Year Implant Course.
If you're interested, why not get in touch? It could take you to another place.
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