Next entry for my DCT competition... with Dayna Rosenthal.

My name is Dayna and I am currently working as a Community Dental Officer in Whittington Health NHS Trust. I recently completed my DCT2 in OMFS at Royal Free Hospitals (Barnet & Chase Farm) and prior to that, I completed a DCT1 in Special Care Dentistry in Buckinghamshire. I chose to go down the DCT path for many reasons:

Prepare yourself as I take you through a week as an Oral and Maxillo-facial Surgery (OMFS) DCT in Royal Free Hospitals...

Monday: Following a previous week of theatres, which may include orthognathic, trauma and neoplasm surgeries, I have a zero day to relax. Hurrah! 

Tuesday: I can't go too wild on my zero day since I am on call in the morning. After receiving the handover, I dash to the emergency theatre board where all the specialities fight for the right for their patients to be treated first. After my best pitch, I attend ward round with the OMFS team and update our inpatients' plans. If the notoriously loud bleep sounds, I have to prioritise when to attend to it. Juggling these tasks definitely improved my multi-tasking and prioritising skills, which I believe are transferable anywhere. Later, I carry out biopsies, complex extractions and extractions on complex patients on my own local anaesthesia list.

Wednesday: Paediatric day surgery. I work with the paediatric nurses, anaesthetists, operating department practitioners and recovery team a lot on these days. This was my favourite list, since I gained some really valuable and interesting surgical experience under general anaesthetic including odontomas and ectopic canines!

Thursday: I join the team at 8am for ward rounds followed by a day on clinic, which is a lucky dip of dental, oral medicine and maxillo-facial pathologies. TMJD, lichen planus and painful wisdom teeth are commonly encountered, and seeing these on a regular basis consolidated my knowledge and communication with these patients and helped me understand appropriate and inappropriate referrals. I also see weird and wonderful pathologies that I thought I would only ever see in a text book, including odontogenic keratocysts and pemphigus. There is always a consultant or registrar around to assess the patients with you , and to learn from a patient in the flesh is a unique and unforgettable experience!

Friday, Saturday & Sunday: Being on call over a weekend is unpredictable. Some weekends are extremely busy with very unwell patients and some are so quiet that I bleep myself just to ensure that my bleep still worked. The on call DCT is responsible for managing the inpatients and patients that come through A&E. A normal weekend may include a few dental abscesses, lacerations, facial fractures and the odd (very satisfying) sebaceous cyst. I learned how to manage these cases and look out for more serious cases such as retrobulbar haemorrhage and Ludwig's Angina. If the on call is quiet (never say the 'q' word), I join the rest of the department for teaching where we have some amazing speakers and even some plating courses! I was fortunate to be able to get involved in some great audits and clinical governance projects and even deliver teaching sessions to my colleagues. 

With no previous OMFS experience, I was petrified about what I had signed up for at the start of DCT, but left feeling confident, with a host of invaluable practical and life skills within my armamentarium. After my OMFS DCT post, a fellow DCT and I set up a paediatric dental educational blog to update and empower dentists in providing good quality paediatric dentsitry in primary care, ToothFaiRead, which can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Thanks Dayna for your entry! Inspiring work by a fellow dental blogger! Look out for still more entries to come. There's also still time to enter if you are a DCT...

Another entry for my DCT competition... with Charlie Devine.

I'm Charlie and I'm an Oral and Maxillo-facial Surgery (OMFS) Dental Core Trainee (DCT1) based at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. I graduated from King's in 2018 and having completed by DFT year just outside of Guildford I wanted to expand my surgical skills and so decided to apply for a hospital training post, with a long-term aim of pursuing a career in oral surgery. 

There is no such thing as a 'typical' week for an OMFS DCT. There is so much variety in the job, especially when on call, which is probably why I enjoy it so much; but I'll descrie a recent week I had to give you an idea. 

Monday: I start the day off by attending ward round at 7:45am to keep updated with our inpatients, then I'm off on consultant clinic all day where we receive a range of referrals including anything from urgent 2 week cancer referrals, to requests for ortho extractions, as well as following up our own head and neck cancer, orthognathic or trauma patients and assessing their progress. 

Tuesday: I'm in Minor Ops this morning and then taking on call. Minor ops is where we carry out simple extractions or biopsies under LA. Being on call involves a mixture of everything including: ward jobs such as removing an extra-oral drain from a dental abscess patient or completing a discharge summary for a patient due to go home, taking referrals from GPs/GDPs/other A&Es and deciding if the patient needs to come in for an assessment, as well as treating patients from our own A&E with various problems such as dog bites, lacerations, dental abscesses and facial fractures. This is one of the few OMFS posts that still has weekends and nights on call and this has taught me the importance of being organised, how to prioritise patients and knowing when to ask for help from your seniors. After 9pm we have protected sleep time and only have to take emergency calls such as severe abscesses with potential airway risks and dental avulsions. I'm lucky and it's a rare night with no calls after 9pm. 

Wednesday: It's my turn to lead the ward round. This is where I inform the team of the expected patients coming in today for assessment and discuss our current inpatients' progress and plans for the day. Once the ward round is complete, I handover the bleep to my DCT colleague taking over and with the rest of the day off, it's home to catch up on sleep. 

Thursday: All day in theatre. This involves clerking and consenting the patients as well as the hands on side of operating. My rotation is mainly dento-alveolar so for the most part, it's impacted or cystic wisdom teeth, today I'm assisting in a particularly complicated case involving kissing molards. Look it up, they're cute in a weird dental way. 

Friday: After ward round, I'm back on clinic for the morning and then off in the afternoon, so it's not busy all the time, just most of it. 

I work with 6 other DCTs and it's true what they say, teamwork really does make the dream work; if you're willing to go the extra mile to help someone out, they will reciprocate when you most need it. If you're considering DCT, I would definitely recommend it, whilst challenging, it's proving an invaluable learning experience.