Report by Dr Rohan Shaffery
Over the last 18 months, since finishing my foundation training, I have been attending Alpha Omega meetings with great enthusiasm.
In the lectures, surrounded by a wealth of experience, I have enjoyed my time so far, as it is clear everyone in the room has the same passion to keep learning in our ever-evolving industry.
I’m fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to build connections in my short time; finding trusting colleagues to refer to and completing the esteemed Basil Mizrahi’s Comprehensive Aesthetic and Restorative course.
When I found out the AO Externship programme was being reintroduced, I jumped at the opportunity to shadow the highly-regarded Professor Eddie Scher. Being early in my surgical/implant career and off the back of Basil’s course with an Implantology MSc on the horizon, it was a no brainer to shadow Eddie. After all, this is the clinician whose practice website has the domain name dental-implants.co.uk.
Liaising with Eddie and his practice was straightforward, and soon enough I found myself in the midst of Chelsea preparing to watch a tricky UR7 implant placement with sinus lift.
This particular day, Eddie had a visiting sedationist to put his patients at ease, although having a clinician with the experience and skills of Eddie would be enough for most patients.
The actual surgery had very difficult access, and not much room to work in but the surgery went well, was handled calmly and one of the most interesting things I was able to observe was the use of PRF as the membrane.
This was something I had only read about before, but after watching it and discussing the benefits with Eddie, it’s definitely something I will be considering for the future.
After lunch I watched a few crown preps and a fixed-fixed bridge prep. The workflow and dynamics with his team was seamless, and you can see the difference it makes to the patient experience.
After a final debrief I headed home re-energised about the type of dentistry I want to do. My ethos and approach to dentistry is similar to Eddie so I think it was the perfect externship for myself, and I look forward to the future and possibly working with Eddie again and keeping in touch at Alpha Omega meetings.
Dr Rohan Shaffery
March 2023
@dr.rohanshaffery Instagram
Comments