Once you have chosen that you would like to become proficient in straightforward and then more advanced implant dentistry for the benefit of yourself, your practice and your patients, then the hard work begins.
One of the hardest steps to take is to decide which route in education is best for you. Over the past few years, for many, it has seemed that the MSc route at an accredited University will provide you with the best grounding for implant dentistry, but this would suggest that you already had a basis in surgical dentistry and restorative dentistry which you could build on with a deeper knowledge and an MSc. For others it was previously a weekend course and has now become the ubiquitous ‘year long’ course that generally spreads 12-15 modules over a year encompassing all aspects of implant dentistry. None of these courses though will select patients for you from your own practice, nor will they provide you the hours to practice surgical dentistry or the insight to practice restorative dentistry. Very few of these courses will introduce you to the concept of melding ethical business with clinical skills in practice. If you were to search dental implant courses UK you would have thousands and thousands of selections to choose from. In order to select the right one for you it is important to know who you are and what type of clinician you would like to be. As is always the case in selecting a project like this, the cheapest or the fastest is not necessarily the best for you (although it may be). If you consider yourself an ethical, honest and high quality practitioner it’s probably best you choose a course of that nature in order to forward your skills to continue to be the same type of practitioner you were at the start of the course when you reach the end.
At The Campbell Academy we would always tell delegates who are beginning to embark on a pathway of implant dentistry that the road is long, the investment is great and the returns are magnificent to those who go about it in the right way. For the young practice owner who decides to embark on implant dentistry, they have many years left in clinical dentistry, to do this in the correct way is a small investment in the long term to reach a fulfilling and enjoyable practicing life. Gaining skills in implant dentistry allows you to ‘move up’ the change of command in dentistry in your practice, delegating lower levels and less profitable tasks to your team while you concentrate on more complicated and interesting cases.
Surely this is the only way to progress in post-graduate education for enthusiastic young practitioners.