Association for Dental Education in Europe

Learning together to improve oral health and quality of life

Sally Hanks

"Receiving the ADEE 40th Anniversary Scholarship Award is a real honour, I feel extremely privileged to have been awarded it, and thank ADEE for its continued support of the advancement of Dental Education, through this and its many other ventures.

I have been working in dental education since 2007 having been a full time clinician since 1994. The leap from clinician to educator was certainly facilitated by attending ADEE conferences every year from the start of my education career, and being fortunate to be chosen to present posters and oral presentations on a wide range of pedagogic areas and scholarly projects, as well as contribute and be involved with the law and ethics SIG.

As lead for the final year of the BDS programme at Peninsula School of Dentistry in Plymouth I am responsible for the curriculum as students’ transition from undergraduates to professional colleagues. I am also lead for professional development and student feedback for the whole Dental School and as a result of this am investigating the concept of ‘capability’ as opposed to ‘competency’ with a medical colleague (Ottawa conference 2016 and publication in Medical Education). The complexity and interaction of these various roles really led me into my PhD which is investigating what ‘management and leadership’ means to primary care dentists out in the real world of clinical practice, and how we can use this information to inform our education and assessment of these areas authentically.

My study utilises ‘Video Reflexive Ethnography’, which is a fairly recent methodological development in healthcare research, and the award has enabled me to buy small and unobtrusive recording equipment to facilitate the recording of dentists’ clinical sessions in practice, as well as enable me to bring my findings to ADEE in the future. The invaluable support of ADEE, through its conference presentations, groups and networking opportunities, as well as its publications has been instrumental in my own personal and professional development; and this award in particular has enabled me to undertake research that has potential to significantly contribute to the education of dentists throughout Europe in the future.

I feel humbled to have my name among the winners of this award, and look forward to hearing about their amazing developments as well as sharing my own over the next few years."

© ADEE 2019

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