Does anyone have experience of implementing sustainability into dental education?

Hi everyone!

I am a dentist taking a year out of Oral Surgery specialty training to undertake a fellowship with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare through the HEE Yorkshire and Humber Future Leaders Programme.

I have a keen interest in implementing environmental sustainability into dental training programmes through education, quality improvement projects and curriculum reform and would be very keen to collaborate with like-minded people on this network!

I would be grateful for anyone who has experience in this area of sustainable dentistry to please get in touch - it would be great to hear your ideas/projects get the conversation flowing and to see what opportunities and challenges you faced.

Happy to chat on here or email if you prefer- j.girdler1@nhs.net.

Comments (2)

David Jones • 1 year ago

Hi Jenny, great to hear from you and fantastic to hear about your fellowship, this is exactly what the profession needs.

I'm doing what I can in the North of Scotland, but it's all at early stages. I do bits of work for NHS Education for Scotland (NES), including regular teaching on inhalation sedation for CTs, Therapists and PDS dentists, as well as update webinars. Whilst massively conflicted about this, I include a significiant discussion of the environmental impacts of nitrous, as well as GA gases and referral service transport footprints. I've also run two webinars for NES which were very much introductions to dental sustainability, and am in discussion with the tutors for the Dental Therapy BSc in Scotland about integrating sustainability into their curriculum. Lots of ideas but all at an early stage. I'd be glad to talk further with anyone else interested!

Jenny Girdler • 1 year ago

Thank you for your reply. I'm in the early stages of my fellowship and currently scoping out what's happening around the UK to see what works and what barriers there are. It certainly feels like sustainability in dentistry is gaining significant momentum- exciting times!

It's great to hear what you're already doing in Scotland to embed sustainability into education. I would be grateful to hear how your conversations with the Dental Therapy BSc education boards go and if you have any top tips.

My current thoughts are that showing dental education boards the Education for Sustainable Healthcare – A curriculum for the UK developed by Dr SanYuMay Tan's working group with the Medical Schools Council and the AMEE Consensus statement would be useful reference points to start the conversation with. Further down the line, perhaps the next stage is to develop an ESH curriculum for dentistry?

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