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Black Lives Matter represents positive action towards equality and inclusivity. The Black Lives Matter protests remind us that, as a society, prejudices and unconscious bias still exist throughout the world. So, how does this inequality impact UK dentistry and what lessons can we learn?Black British dentists and dental care professionals (DCPs) are greatly under-represented in the UK workforce. The cause is multifactorial, but clearly measures need to be made from an early age, as Black prospective students have a 19% acceptance rate into dentistry, compared with 54% white and 41% Asian.As a Black British dental student working with my White British dental tutor, we address barriers that affect Black students and offer recommendations. These struggles are not exclusively related to skin colour, but evidence shows that Black British individuals are more likely to experience detrimental factors.We recognise that it is not the majority that suffer from under-representation, but the minorities; it filters into all aspects of dentistry, including treatment planning and disease diagnosis. Black DCPs and dentists have a contextual understanding of the barriers their communities face and will prove pivotal in workforce diversification. However, we all have a part to play in improving healthcare quality. Together, we can do more.

The biomedical model has been severely criticised in the last decades and its dominance challenged. This is why the concept of person-centred dentistry has penetrated the professional discourse and become a growing concern for our profession. Furthermore, dentists have been urged to take patients' environment more into account and to tackle the social determinants of their health, illness and access to care. Unfortunately, dentists still poorly comprehend person-centredness and social dentistry, and face difficulties to implement biopsychosocial approaches. To respond to these issues, we propose the Montreal-Toulouse Biopsychosocial Model for dentistry, which encompasses patient-centredness and social dentistry. Our model presents three types of tasks (understanding, decision-making and intervening) that dentists should take in each of three overlapping levels (individual, community and society). We also propose a 'Q-List', an original tool designed to help dental professionals adopting this model and reflecting upon their actions. This Q-List includes key questions to elicit dentists' reflexiveness and to support their biopsychosocial practice of dentistry. We invite dental professionals to adopt biopsychosocial approaches and use the Montreal-Toulouse Model as a guide. We also encourage them to use our Q-List and adapt it to their context of practice.

Introduction The practice of dentistry has become increasingly commercialised and commodified. Conflicts between the commercial and professional obligations that dental practitioners face have been discussed in the academic literature. This review collates the available information and discusses how the area of commercialism and professionalism has developed.Methods A scoping review was carried out to assess the current literature in this area. Several databases were searched using relevant terms. Following collection of literature sources these were initially screened for duplication.Results Of the total of 141 sources which were reviewed by title, abstract and keywords, 47 sources were selected for full text review. Qualitative synthesis revealed the three overarching themes of: (1) preserving professional values; (2) the realities of dental practice; and (3) contrasting and conflicting priorities.Conclusion The interaction between commercialism and professionalism presented in the reviewed literature suggested that commercial interests in dentistry are a direct threat to professional values. Accompanying this discussion was a relative dearth of pragmatic exploration of how this conflict might be managed. There was also a lack of consideration of how the corporatisation of dental businesses might affect - whether positively or negatively - the nexus between commercial and professional obligations in dentistry.

Despite the major improvements in clinical dentistry, resulting from dental science efforts to shape current clinical dentistry, it has been almost forty years since a new therapy has reached dental practice. The focused scientific effort on evolving dental materials and equipment to facilitate their use has overshadowed the most important aim for developing new dental techniques: human biology. This opinion piece argues a new mindset in dentistry is crucial for the birthing of innovative treatments. It also discusses the path for a new era of dentistry that welcomes new biologically based approaches, including whole dental pulp and bioengineered tooth regeneration, currently being tested in cutting-edge laboratories around the world. Suggestions will be made to justify the reason clinicians must be educated in molecular biology and how universities and the General Dental Council need to prepare in-qualification or qualified dentists. A new biologically-based era of dentistry is around the corner and dentistry as we know it is changing forever.

In order to best use available resources, the dental workforce needs to be sufficiently skilled to provide the correct treatment in the right place in the patient pathway, without need for escalation to secondary care. Education is a means to improve quality of healthcare with significance being placed on the proficiency of teaching and effectiveness of learning. The aim is to make the most efficient use of resources to upskill the existing workforce without significant reduction in the services that can be provided during training. With increasing academic demands on the undergraduate curriculum, there may be an expectation that general dental practitioners involved in vocational training now have a larger role to play in providing clinical training for the graduating dentists of the future. With this in mind, this article provides a narrative overview of the concepts to be considered in dental education and training. More education and training activities may be expected to take place in the workplace; therefore general dental practitioners may be at the forefront of providing high quality practice-based dental education and training in the future.

This paper introduces clinicians to sustainability as it relates to dentistry. There are seven papers in the series. These include this introduction, followed by papers on energy, procurement, travel, waste, biodiversity and engagement and embedding sustainability into current dental practice. A sustainable world aims to ensure the basic needs and quality of life of everyone are met, now and for future generations. The current delivery of healthcare in the modern world is not sustainable due to rising financial costs, increasing demands and a high environmental burden. Dentists, like their medical counterparts, need to consider the General Dental Council (GDC) standards and the relationship between planetary health and human health within their practice. There is increasing awareness of the problems associated with global warming but a lack of knowledge on how to become more environmentally sustainable. There are also financial and reputational benefits to becoming more sustainable for practices. The carbon footprint is one proxy of sustainability and is closely related to expenditure. In 2014-2015, the carbon footprint of dentistry was calculated to be 675 kilotonnes carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) with 64.5% related to travel, 15.3% from energy and 19% from procurement. The GDC should consider incorporating sustainability education into the undergraduate framework in line with student demands and similar moves by the General Medical Council.

Introduction Defensive dentistry has become a popular choice for dentists in practice over the past decade, partly in response to the supposed increasing risks to patient safety, of litigation and of health and safety concerns to patients and staff.Methods Using a quantitative analysis, care plans of 96 dentists were examined from one day in April 2017 and compared against these known risks. One thousand four hundred and seventeen care plans were coded by treatment type. The risks of completing each item were coded as high or low for either clinical risk, health and safety risk and risk of litigation. Subsequently, semi structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants; five practitioners of over 25 years' experience and seven practitioners of less than five years' experience.Results All assessments and treatments, including no treatment, had recognised risks. 'Doing nothing' also carried a risk of litigation. Four themes were identified from the interviews: 'there by the grace of God, go I', 'limitations on the scope of practice', 'fear' and 'c'est la vie'.Discussion The profession is at a crossroads. The options for the future are discussed, including immediate retraining for all dental care professionals.Conclusion Within the limitations of this study, it is concluded that increasingly, no risk or only low risk treatments will be undertaken by the profession, with both experienced and less experienced practitioners limiting their scope of practice, with possible deleterious consequences on the dental health of the population.

Why did I want to become a dentist? I wanted a job where I would be respected as a professional and could change the lives of others, using my hands. This, I thought, would be my ideal profession; one where I could walk into work with a smile on my face every day. Cue dental school a place where one is trained to become competent in all areas of general dentistry. As readers will appreciate, dentistry is a vast field and the question that comes to mind is how so many diverse and varied topics can be jam packed into a five-year course. There has always been a debate about what to put in, and therefore leave out. At my particular dental school, the first two years covered basic scientific theory, leaving three years to get into clinical dentistry with some 'other' aspects sprinkled in. Some of these aspects included general communication skills, record keeping and one or two practice visits at fancy dental practices to see how good life was as a general dental practitioner. In light of the profession's current climate and the rise of defensive dentistry, I aim to reflect on why many young graduates from all over the country feel out of touch with the profession so early on in their careers, and why some of these 'other' aspects of dentistry should have been covered much more comprehensively to prepare us for the big wide world.

Defining patient-centred care in dentistry? A systematic review of the dental literature.

On 23 June 2016, eligible UK voters will be asked to decide whether to vote in the EU referendum. The EU impacts on our daily lives in more ways than many people realise. Dentistry is affected by EU legislation. Examples include the movement of dental professionals, the import of dental equipment and materials, as well as health and safety legislation. Many more EU dentists and DCPs come to the UK to work than vice versa. These numbers have increased markedly since 2004. The result of the vote may affect how dentistry operates in the UK in future years. In addition, a vote to stay would not necessarily prevent change. There are attempts underway to increase the ease by which professionals can work in other member states, especially on a temporary basis. This too is likely affect dentistry at some point. Workforce planners and policy makers should factor in the impact of the EU in future dental policy.

Clinical dental work is placing increasing demands on a clinician's vision as new techniques that require fine detail become more common. High hand-eye coordination requires good visual acuity as well as other psychological and neurological qualities such as stereopsis. Stereopsis (three-dimensional vision) is the highest form of depth perception obtained by visual disparity of images formed in the retinas of two eyes. It is believed to confer functional benefits on everyday tasks such as hand-eye coordination. Although its role in depth perception has long been established, little is known regarding the importance of stereopsis in dentistry. This article reviews the role of stereopsis in everyday life and the available literature on the importance of stereopsis in dentistry.

Newly qualified dentists are entering their profession at one of the most uncertain periods in its history. It seems no profession is immune from the current economic downturn and NHS reforms. Can recent graduates of dentistry remain optimistic about their career choice?

Objective: To review the literature on the development and effectiveness of clinical guidelines., Design: Literature review of relevant publications following a Medline search. Publications that reported studies investigating effectiveness of guidelines were confined to randomised controlled trials., Conclusions: If guidelines are to be effective they should be (i) based on high levels of scientific evidence, (ii) developed with input from the dentists who will be using them and (iii) presented in a satisfactory manner. Importantly, the effectiveness of the guidelines should be rigorously evaluated.