Academic training model

Sir, The Walport Report published by Modernising Medical Careers in conjunction with Clinical Research Collaboration (CRC) UK has highlighted the need for increasing numbers of clinical academics in dentistry.¹ The shortage of suitably qualified dentists for professorial posts is especially acute in paediatric dentistry, oral medicine, oral pathology, conservative dentistry and prosthetic dentistry. There has been little change in numbers of staff holding clinical academic dental contracts between 2000 and 2003, and the Council of Heads of Medical Schools (CHMS) and Council of Deans of Dental Schools (CDDS) survey of clinical academic staffing levels records that academic dentistry is already operating at the lowest staffing levels for more than a decade!² At the same time the UK Government plans to increase the number of dental undergraduate training places in England by 170 from October 2005.³ Walport makes a number of recommendations including that dental schools develop comprehensive programmes to encourage students into clinical academic dentistry, including the development of BDS-PhD programmes, and development of integrated academic training programmes in dentistry with increased flexibility and partnership in funding for training position. A model for such a programme already exists in oral surgery.

The Academic Advisory Committee for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (AACOMS) was formed in the 1990s with the purpose of managing the training of academics. Entry requirements include a registrable dental qualification, MFDS and PhD and experience at the level of SHO in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery with evidence of having made contribution to the scientific literature. Once enrolled, training is for four years leading to the award of Certificates of Completion of Specialist Training (CCST). Time from achieving basic dental degree to CCST in Academic Oral Surgery is around 10 years. To date 12 specialist trainees have achieved consultant posts after completing this programme: five have achieved personal chairs. Currently there are four trainees in Academic Oral Surgery.

As with any clinical academic training programme, academic training in oral surgery has competing pressures of service, research, teaching and administrative activities and challenges in the areas of funding (lack of NHS funding for junior academic training posts). A concerted effort is needed between the universities, the Royal Colleges and the NHS in the context of the Joint Committee for Specialist Training in Dentistry to address these pressures and to formalise clinical academic training applying the AACOMS model more widely in dentistry.