It certainly has been ‘all smiles’ recently for one of our North Yorkshire dentists as he continues his journey back into lecturing.

Guy Wells, Clinical Director working at our Vitality Dental Care practices in Stokesley and Northallerton, has been keen to get more involved with the teaching side of dentistry, to compliment his day-to-day role and to pass on his knowledge to others.

Guy originally got involved with the IAS Academy back in 2018 when he started their advanced orthodontic course, primarily run by Professor Ross Hobson. Since then, he has been providing orthodontics using their support forum – a brilliant way to sense check his treatment plans and tap into the wealth of experience that the available specialist orthodontists can bring as treatment progresses.

“Essentially, it’s a lovely way for a general dentist like me to gain experience in, and provide, orthodontics safely for my patients” Guys explains.

Once he’d finished the advanced course, he attended several other IAS Academy courses to further develop his knowledge and skills. Whilst there, he got chatting to Professor Ross Hobson about teaching opportunities; something he hadn’t done for a while following a brief foray doing small-group training for foundation dentists several years ago. It was during that conversation that Ross encouraged him to give it a go again whilst explaining their training structure for lecturing.

“I was then put in touch with Tif Qureshi (via Ross) and he suggested that his Align, Bleach & Bond course would be a perfect fit for me as it’s a mix of Orthodontics and Aesthetic Restorative – which is what I spend most of my clinical time doing!

I’ve helped on the course three times now over the last year, including on the recent course held for Riverdale associates. This has initially been as a ‘clinical trainer’, where I help delegates with the hands-on components of the course, while I familiarise myself with the lectures.”

However, most recently, Guy has been fortunate enough to deliver a couple of small sections of the course presentation, which has helped to ease him back into lecturing whilst providing fantastic experience.

His involvement with the IAS Academy has also coincided with the opportunity to assist Riverdale Group Clinical Director, Neeraj Diddee, in delivering his hands-on Anterior & Posterior Composite courses for the Northern Deanery.

“Three days after I lectured at the IAS Academy course, Neeraj asked me to present some of his Posterior Composite course which, I’m told, went well too. Was certainly quite a week!”

Guy’s motivation has seen him take advantage of the opportunities available to him, and he is keen to keep going with what he has started:

“I’m very much in the infancy of my teaching journey but I have already received good feedback from both trainers and delegates alike, which at this stage is as good as I could hope for!”