Sir, as an oral and maxillofacial surgery SHO, it was recently bought to my attention that we should be fighting as dentally-qualified SHOs to keep our positions available for the future. There has been re-structuring in Oxford and the London Deanery to remove dentists from the rota and on-call duties. For other hospitals this brings into question the educational value and validity of dentists working in an OMFS team.

Before working as an OMFS SHO, horror stories floating around the dental world would have led me to ask the same question. However, over the last eight months to mention only a few incidences, I have prevented a partially erupted upper permanent incisor from attempted removal by a doctor thinking it was a broken fragment of tooth, and prevented a deciduous incisor from being re-implanted by a registrar unsure of eruption dates – not to mention our ability to diagnose or rule out dental abscesses. From an educational aspect, as a newly qualified dentist I considered myself under the heading of having had little undergraduate experience of minor oral surgery techniques. I now have a greater confidence and skill in surgical extractions and dealing with dental emergencies.

I realise our role on the ward is limited and a recent patient with tachycardia left me phoning my second-on-call. However, in a well-structured OMFS unit with MOS sessions and an A&E that realises they are referring to a dentally-qualified SHO, the experience gained is invaluable and character shaping to young dentists.

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