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NHS Education for Scotland

A skilled and sustainable workforce for a healthier Scotland

Developing new Dental Approaches

Developing new Dental Approaches

Developing new Dental Approaches

In mid-March, when the decision was made to pause face to face education and training, all workstreams within NES Dental moved rapidly to develop new online approaches to enable our trainees, as well as all members of the dental team, to continue their learning and their continuing professional development.

As things start to return to the ‘new normal’, some of these innovative methods that have worked so successfully, to deliver education and training remotely are likely to remain with us and form part of blended models of delivery.

The Dental Care Professional workstream are redesigning their educational programmes, including dental nurse training, and the initial feedback from learners and stakeholders has been very positive. Remote assessment of dental nurse trainees in their training practices using live video streaming, avoiding the need for tutors to attend in person is being developed.

In Dental Vocational Training, the GDC have required all new dental graduates to undertake clinical skills training prior to treating patients. To support this, phantom heads have been purchased for all trainees to use in their training practices, to supplement the clinical skills sessions they have undertaken in the postgraduate centres. The study day programmes have been front-loaded at the start of the training year and are being delivered using GoTo and Microsoft Teams.

The Core and Specialty Training workstream recently arranged an online version of their annual conference, giving the Dental Core Trainees the opportunity to present their work to their colleagues and the core training team verbally or in poster format. The new training year commenced on the first Wednesday of September with induction delivered using TURAS Learn. The smaller number of new Specialty Trainees had a welcome meeting with the Associate Dean using Teams. Similarly, the annual induction for DCTs working in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery units was replaced by smaller, locally delivered sessions, co-ordinated by one of the Dental Core Training Advisors. The Reviews of Competence Progression for Core and Specialty Trainees have followed 4 nation guidance and have worked remotely, initially with small panels. Panel composition has now increased in size and the Specialty Training Committees have recently resumed remotely.

The Continuing Professional Development workstream has delivered over 70 webinars since April, with more than 24,000 attendances, including the infection control and return to practice webinars presented by the QIiPT team. In addition to planning further webinars on key topics, they are now exploring remote clinical skills training, including sending out training materials in advance, with the presenter then able to see what’s been done and provide feedback. Online delivery of the Mandatory Training programme, for new and returning entrants to Scotland, has been very successful, and this is likely to remain, avoiding the need for attendees to travel great distances to spend three days in face to face training.

The Priority Groups workstreams intend to utilise Articulate Storyline, videos, quizzes and voiced over presentations to create an interactive learning experience with embedded evaluation which would be complemented by live webinar sessions. The essential practical elements will be delivered in smaller groups with assessments being done remotely using NHS Near Me technology which is already being utilised in Health Boards for other purposes. The first two Open Badges, aimed at those working in Care Home and Care at Home services have provided online learning when face to face training in these environments had to be withdrawn.

Within the Clinical Effectiveness workstream, SDCEP are leading a review of the international evidence related to Aerosol Generating Procedures, which will be available soon to inform UK guidance. They collaborated on comparing similarities and differences in guidance across the UK with respect to remobilisation of dental services and published Return to Practice Guidance and a Practice Recovery Toolkit.

The QIiPT team continued to deliver infection control education to dental teams through a rapid transition using webinars. Using the SDCEP Return to Practice Guidance they delivered webinars for the whole dental team to help practices implement the new requirements. Approximately 6800 attended over a 6-week period. In addition, with the support of NES Comms, QIiPT produced a sequence of short video clips to demonstrated how an NHS dental practice had adapted to enable them to reopen and provide a safe setting for patients and staff. These videos are available on TURAS Learn.


September, 23 2020