On Friday 19 June, the British Society of Dental Hygiene & Therapy launched First Smiles, a campaign aiming to introduce oral health education to young children in the classroom.

This programme aimed to make children feel more at ease about seeing dental professionals. We wanted to forge important links between schools and their local dental practices, improve the oral health of children across the UK and increase the amount of time oral care is taught in the classroom in order to reduce the amount of primary school children in the UK with tooth decay.

We are so proud of the number of our members who got involved and made the campaign a huge success. Teaching good habits and routines at an early age means they are more likely to be continued on into adulthood. By instilling the importance of a healthy mouth, we are not only creating good health for these children now, but the benefits will most likely continue far into the future. Hopefully we can build on this next year.

We have also just co-hosted EuroPerio 8 which was a huge conference with around 9,000 attendees. It was impossible to see everything but all agreed it was an amazing experience. Now the hard work starts as we endeavour to collect the whole team together for our flagship Oral Health Conference in Belfast on 18 and 19 November 2016. Bitter sweet for me as this will be the conference I step down at, but no better place for a party!

In October we will be holding our AGM at the BDIA showcase in Birmingham. We have a jam packed day for our members. BSDHT is offering 300 lucky members the chance to receive up to four hours FREE CPD delivered by world renowned speakers. We know there will be a high demand so we will be issuing tickets on a first come first served basis. More details on this will be found on our website www.bsdht.org.uk.

As well as the CPD we will be unveiling a number of awards. These are:

  • The winner of the Oral Hygiene by Design Award with a mock-up of the winning design

  • The winner of the Students Leaflet prize with some of the winning leaflets printed and ready for use

  • The Dr Leatherman will also be awarded and the research poster awards will be on display and the winners recognised.

All this and the chance to visit the largest dental trade show in the UK for FREE, you can't afford to miss it.

As for the political side; there are many changes I would like to see in our profession. Being able to prescribe is one. We have had quite a few meetings on this topic over the years. In order for BSDHT to move forward with their request to be a non-medical subscriber we need to gather information on how the need to have an individual prescription for each treatment episode affects daily practice. This prescription must be given, not for a course of treatment, but for every time a patient attends and must include the name of the medicine, the route of administration. (e.g. infiltration, intraligamentary) and the dose. For those of us in practice we know how frustrating this is, hence we will be taking a survey to find out its impact. Look out for this in the coming weeks.

Another area where we need to see movement is on the ability to open a course of treatment in the NHS. Each country in the UK has the same restriction but all have differing ideas on how to move forward. At present a dentist has to examine a patient in order to open a course, even if the appointment is for a 3/12 maintenance appointment with the hygienist. Surely this time costs the NHS money?

One of the more fun parts of this role was to represent BSDHT at the launch of National Smile Month. This is an important team event in the dental calendar and obviously well recognised throughout the general public. Even the Cats Protection Charity compiled a Cheshire cat gallery for National Smile Month. Not exactly the target audience but raised a smile all the same!

Best wishes,

Michaela ONeill, President, British Society of Dental Hygiene & Therapy