£5m investment in Portsmouth University Dental Academy

The News, Portsmouth

Transcript

00:00 So that is the opportunity that we've been waiting for a long time to get these new facilities

00:06 open to start with the research but also to highlight what we've been doing over the years

00:11 and also it's going to help us to improve and to enhance our educational provision as

00:16 you can see with the new facilities that we have now.

00:19 Perfect, so could you, your title, you're AOV expertise in terms of public health and

00:25 the facilities here, how do you think that will roll over in terms of ports within the

00:28 community and public health in general?

00:33 Well the dental academy has a huge civic commitment so we've been working with community outreach

00:40 and community and underserved communities for many years now.

00:45 So this new setting that we have now is aiming to improve what we are delivering currently

00:52 to the community.

00:53 For example we are working with local schools over the last 12 years we are delivering a

00:58 toothbrush supervised toothbrushing scheme to the community so we work with local schools,

01:05 students are delivering toothbrushes and toothpaste to children, doing dental screening and also

01:12 providing fluoride varnish and dental health education to the teachers.

01:17 But now with this new digital dentistry we are including also intraoral cameras to the

01:22 programme so students are taking pictures of these children's mouth to make the screening

01:27 more accurate.

01:29 So basically we don't need a dentist to be on site by the day of the screening when our

01:34 students are out there but when the pictures are coming to the academy then they can make

01:39 the screening more efficiently and that increase the detection in about 50%.

01:46 So we are very happy with that and we are using this new lab as well to make this possible.

01:53 In terms of your future research, do you want to open up more possibilities for you and

02:00 for the university?

02:01 Yeah, of course.

02:02 First of all with the improvement in the students' training of course we are aiming to increase

02:12 the capacity of dental care provision that is also related to research.

02:19 We are very low in numbers in terms of NHS dentistry which is in crisis currently.

02:24 So anything that we can do to improve dental care provision is going to help us.

02:27 If the students are training better then our care provision is going to improve as well.

02:33 And of course with the dental lab we are aiming to test new and more modern ways of giving

02:40 the patients better access to dental health.

02:43 For example with new materials to make prosthesis or in sports dentistry we can make sports

02:51 cards and we can use all these facilities to make this possible.

02:56 How has the feedback been with students?

02:58 It's been very positive, they are very excited I think.

03:01 It's new for all of us, we are also learning but they are very much tech-savvy than us

03:08 so it's going to be a very, very exciting process for now with the students.

03:14 We are very fortunate in having £5 million funding from the University of Portsmouth

03:22 and also £600,000 funding from NHS England to really upgrade our clinical facilities

03:30 and introduce a whole range of digital dentistry related equipment.

03:36 So that includes the haptic simulation equipment that we have here, those eight units will

03:43 allow our students to simulate working with patients in advance of them treating their

03:50 real patients.

03:52 We also have a digital dentistry set up which really will allow and expose our students

03:58 to the whole new area of digital dentistry which includes intra-oral scanning of patients

04:05 mouths instead of taking the traditional moulds and impressions all the way up to milling

04:12 items of treatment such as a crown for a patient or 3D printing for example a soft bite guard

04:21 or a sports card.

04:24 And are there any other universities or facilities that have this kind of technology at the moment

04:28 in the UK?

04:29 I think it's fair to say that not every dental school in the UK will have this sort of equipment.

04:36 We're I think one of a relatively small number that do have a digital dentistry set up as

04:44 well as a haptic simulation set up.

04:46 And are you seeing an upturn in student interest from that?

04:51 Student interest has been phenomenal.

04:54 We've only just acquired the equipment and so our first year students have just been

04:59 introduced to it and we're absolutely determined to make sure it's a fundamental part of the

05:05 curriculum so their feedback has been extremely positive.

05:09 But we've also had really positive feedback on our open days when we invite parents and

05:14 prospective students to come to the Dental Academy on these open days and they have been

05:21 impressed as well.

05:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended