Catherine Rutland discusses the continued need to adapt and change.
Do you ever feel like you can’t learn fast enough? I have to say, this is me a lot of the time at the moment! I love to learn, not just for my role, but also in so many areas of life. This last year with things changing constantly in so many fields, it has sometimes felt that there is never enough time to read, learn, listen and reflect.
Some of my learning is through wider projects with many different people. I mentioned last month that we had held a virtual roundtable and that the aim of this was to understand differing viewpoints and feed these into a white paper on the future of dentistry.
Working on this has taught me so much and it has been so satisfying to see the project go from conception last year, to being launched in April. Gathering views and information, the team has explored many areas of the profession and at the centre of it, taken our members’ views and explored further in the areas that mattered most to them.
Raising the voice of private and mixed practice has also been at the heart of the paper. It is important that government really understands the influence these practices have on the oral health of the nation. We need to make sure that government and the public do not just see private dentistry as cosmetic dentistry and understand that a large part of private dentistry is general dental practice, serving generations of the same family and building relationships, trust and excellent long-term care.
Recognition of this and respect for the role of private dentistry will be so important as the profession moves forward with time.
Exploring different areas and hearing views made me very proud to be part of the profession. The care that people expressed for their patients and the teams they work with, and also wider concern for undergraduates and our peers in difficulty, was at the core of so many conversations.
Watching people behind the scenes pull together the information and position it correctly to be shared with MPs has taught me a lot, mainly around communicating in a style and type of language that is appropriate to your audience.
Learning and development is something that is so important to keep us fulfilled and we also need to make sure our teams have the opportunity to further themselves and learn more, to enhance their current roles and to prepare them for the future. If we wish to keep people in the profession, we need to allow them to develop and grow.
In our wider lives, I think this last year has taught us a lot about adapting, about acceptance and also to appreciate what we hold most important. I suppose the big question, and I have raised it before, is whether we will have learnt enough to make sure we remember them as we move out of tighter restrictions. Having finally been able to share Christmas presents with my parents and siblings a few weeks ago, and the fact that for them my puppy had magically gone from four-months size last time they saw her to 10-months size, was a stark reminder of some of the things we have missed and the time apart from each other.
I feel like I will also have things to relearn, having not been in the office for over a year or out and about for meetings, like how to dress smartly and how to walk in heels! Joking aside, there will be a lot to adapt to again.
As we carry on through this year, let us make sure that we continue to adapt, change and learn, for our own good, yet also to further the profession and support those around us. Continue to look out for people and support them; times will continue to be different and hard for many. Remember what you have learnt and hang onto it. We owe it to ourselves for the tough times we and all around us have been through.