TRAINING OF DENTISTS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27443, 1 September 1954, Page 6

TRAINING OF DENTISTS

Suggested Dispersal O: Senior Students

ADOPTION OF MEDICAL PRACTICE URGED

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 31. Serious thought should be given to the desirability of dispersing senior dental students to the larger cities—as was being done with medical students —because of the lack of sufficient clinical material, at Dunedin, said the president of the New Zealand Dental Association (Mr M. E. Priestley, of Auckland) at the annual meeting of the association today. The announcement that a new, but modified, dental school was to be built at Dunedin would not completely satisfy the profession that, in the event of many additional students having to be trained. Dunedin could provide the necessary clinical material, Mr Priestley said. Those who had passed through in the larger classes had experienced a serious shortage of certain kinds of

material—for the treatment of root canals, for instance—and on entering the profession they might be called upon to undertake treatments of which they had no previous clinical experience whatsoever. On the other hand, valuable material

was going to waste in the other large cities. Mr Priestley said there was also a lack of research scholars and the facilities for them.

Currency restrictions, he said, denied New Zealand dentists many refinements in materials and equipment. Importers catered for the majority rather than for the fastidious, and they largely decided what dentists shoulc use. As a result, a generation of dentists who had never known anything better than the mediocre stock they were forced to accept was growing up. A glance through overseas journals showed how limited the dentist’s choice was here, he said. If this continued too long, it would produce an insidious lowering of standards, and it was highly probable that a recession was now well under way, Mr Priestley said. The profession should guard against the easy way out by thinking that its services in New Zealand were second to none. This view was not shared by all, nor was it conducive to advancement.

Mr Priestley briefly touched the possibility of further dental benefits by saying that legislators should remember that to encourage easy denture services was to encourage mutilation of the body. The school dental service taught how to preserve teeth, and it would be wrong if another Government department were to make removal too attractive. The indigent aged could be given a denture service through a grant from the Social Security Fund.