Can you remember your first extraction at dental school? I can, he was a Postman and it was an upper right six. He knew it was my first extraction and he looked after me so well. It was a massively exciting and exhilarating experience. From that point onward I guess I knew I wanted to be involved in something surgical based and I think back often to how enthused and excited I was with surgery at that stage.

In The Campbell Academy we see many people who were once excited about surgery and are now daunted by the prospect of providing more complicated surgical procedures than simple extractions. They are also wondering when is the best time to start moving along to performing more stimulating and testing surgical procedures. Although that is a very personal question for individuals, it’s possible within your own practising life to aim for increasing your skills in a safe and secure way. In your own practice time, that may include looking for more difficult extractions and planning them into appropriate appointment slots where you have a helping hand close by, should a problem occur. It may include attending courses that allow you to increase the skills practically on pigs’ heads or cadavers so that you can see whether you feel you have the confidence and skills available to target more complex surgical procedures. You may decide to provide apicectomy procedures or removal of third molars. Always through these advancements in your practice you should review the cases that you do to make sure that they’ve gone as you would hope, try and photograph whatever you can and try and share it with your peers and colleagues to see what improvements you can make (Facebook is not necessarily the best way to do this because it’s often only the best cases that get posted).

To get ahead in surgery though, to move forwards into a position where you enjoy more complicated cases is a planned approach; one which is a combination of theoretical knowledge, practical skills, application and reflection. All the theoretical knowledge in the world will never make you better at surgery, you must ‘get your hands dirty’ in a safe and secure way to understand the concepts you have learned academically. You must then reflect on the outcomes to see how you can improve and get better.

If there were three areas that were the most important to get ahead in improving surgical skills in early stages of dental careers, I would suggest they were the following:

1. Targeted, empathic, high quality teaching in surgical skills and case selection (case selection is essential)

2. A safe environment and opportunity to work and practice your skills with the correct equipment and correct team (this is why it’s called practice!)

3. Access to mentoring advice prior to the procedure, during the procedure if necessary and for reflection afterwards.

Put these things in place and combine them with some enthusiasm and it is a great recipe for moving forwards to surgical success.