News

This month was marked by a number of events at the Palace of Westminster, and the Society’s 70th Anniversary Dinner was probably the most friendly of them all! After an afternoon of CPD on a range of diverse topics, from three excellent international speakers, there was just time to board the Jubilee Line to Westminster. We then, after traversing Security, experienced an in-depth and educational tour of the Palace, including both Chambers, Division lobbies, Westminster Hall, St Stephens Hall and various other areas. Sir Paul Beresford kindly hosted us for a sold-out Dinner, which also included an insightful update on the current political situation from Isabel Oakeshott. I wish to thank Tamsin and Paula for their hard work and support in organising the evening, in conjunction with Sir Paul and his team. Please don’t forget to complete your evaluations and feedback from this or any other preceding meetings and webinars. As we finally may just be edging towards summer, we have two upcoming webinars in quick succession, so use your wifi (or even 5G?) to watch these in the sunshine (hopefully)!

1. What is your position in the BSP and what does this role involve? I am the Chair of the Practitioners Section. This is a position of great privilege as I represent the interests of the largest group that makes up the membership of the BSP.

We have had an extremely positive response to the decision-making flowchart we created to help practitioners adapt to the 2017 classification. The document is free to everyone and downloadable from the Professionals – Publications page of our website: https://www.bsperio.org.uk/publications/index.php In addition, we produced a laminated version and have distributed over 49,500 copies to practitioners throughout the UK. We are grateful to the many organisations who supported us in this initiative to ensure that we adequately supported the dental profession in their diagnoses and treatment of periodontal patients.

We recently received a communication from the GDC as part of a consortium of health regulators, highlighting the importance of reflective practice within clinical and professional settings. BSP supports this not only for clinical knowledge and practice but also patient management and team working. This also relates to the GDC's favoured means of CPD based around PDPs.

In 2017, the British Society of Periodontology took the innovative step of involving patients in their work, by setting up the BSP Patient Forum. Led by Professor Ian Needleman, the Patient Forum has already proved to be a huge success, providing a voice to the patient community to help shape the future of gum health in the UK and to work closely alongside the Society.

We are delighted to announce that Mike Milward has been elevated to Professor of Periodontology at the University of Birmingham. We are incredibly proud of Mike’s achievement and believe that this honour is richly deserved.

Thanks to new research carried out, ‘lifelike’ dental models with the tactile qualities of real mouths will be used to train the next generation of dentists. A joint project by Professor Michael Milward and Professor Paul Cooper at the University of Birmingham’s School of Dentistry and PhD candidate Richard Arm at the Nottingham Trent University (NTU) will allow student dentists to experience and learn how it feels to use periodontal probes to check for gum disease.

It is with great sadness that we have to report the sad passing of Dermot Strahan on 7th June. He was President of BSP from 1975 to 1976 and made a significant impact in UK research and postgraduate training during his time at the Eastman.

BSP Awards & Prizes To reflect our commitment to progression and innovation, the BSP awards prizes for research into periodontology - both for undergraduate and postgraduate students - on an annual basis. We were delighted to award the following prizes at our recent Annual Conference in Brighton: Sir Wilfred Fish Research Prize – Ana Caetano Fellowship Award – James Chesterman Research Grant – Tanya Cerajewska and Cher Farrugia Clinical Poster Prize – Mohsin Mughal Research Poster Prize – Jelena Taylor