We have been involved in education in implant dentistry since the late 1990s, from the very early days of the ‘weekend warrior’ to the explosion of MScs in implant dentistry promising much for individuals who invest lots of time and money.
It became apparent to me a few years ago that there was no joined up, start to finish pathway in implant dentistry and at The Campbell Academy we decided to try and build this over the next few years. With my colleague Andrew Legg, we set up an organisation that could feasibly take people from a standing start in implant dentistry to fifty implants per year and a level of competency and reflection, which would ensure protection to the public through competent practitioners.
The began with introductory three-day courses where delegates are brought to the practice, taught surgical skills and patient assessment for straightforward cases and place an implant into a patient at the end of the course. This would give people a solid introduction to see whether they were interested in surgical implant dentistry and a similar course is provided by The Campbell Academy in restorative implant dentistry for people not interested in surgery.
The follow on from this would be the year course in implant dentistry. This is a module course with fifteen modules including patient assessment, patient selection, marketing, surgical skills, restorative skills and live surgery on patients within the clinic carried out by the delegates, either assessed by us or better still by the delegates themselves.
Together with this is an online discussion forum that delegates use and it’s linked into a mentoring scheme with a network of mentors throughout the country who can ensure that people who attend the year long course can carry on in their implant career in a safe and secure fashion when the course is completed.
We were also keen to put in advance level course including aesthetic implant placement and Cone Beam CT analysis and complex courses including Immediate Full Arch reconstruction and sinus grafting.
We also provide courses on occlusion and Master Classes in many aspects of implant dentistry including anatomy, medicine in relation to dentistry and others.
Together with this we provide a year-long business course for Principals and Practice Managers to improve the business structures within their practice to help secure and retain more patients.
We have plans for a year two implant course for practitioners in more advanced and complex scenarios.
We are delighted that some people who have previously been on courses have now been able to become educators and faculty members. We feel this completed the loop.
We are committed to providing ethical, high quality education in implant dentistry to create practitioners who will place and / or restore fifty implants per year or more leading to competent, safe implant teams where everyone is rewarded, from the patient to the team to the dentist themselves. We believe this is an exceptional pathway in implant dentistry for anyone who is interested and people are able to pick their position on the pathway based on their previous experience as appropriate.
From a standing start it is liable to take five years to get to an appropriate level and the level of investment in time, emotion and money is not insignificant but we are here to steer people through this and we have all been through it ourselves.
Hopefully we’ll see you somewhere along the pathway at some point if implant dentistry is for you.
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