Ahead lies an exciting, tumultuous yet rewarding path which starts off with your foundation year. Having just completed my Foundation year successfully, I am sharing some tips that I wish I knew of. 

During your foundation year, you’ll have lots of people around you for support. However, the important thing is that you know who to approach for certain matters. 

Your Educational Supervisor is responsible for:

Your Training Programme Director is responsible for:

Don’t forget the support staff especially the lovely admin team who help you when you’re locked out of the portfolio! 

For my scheme, the Autumn term was the heaviest for coursework. This includes:

There is more coursework to come after Christmas, but I found the Autumn term the busiest. 

This isn’t much different from dental school and there are rough guidelines on how many procedures you should complete. If you notice yourself falling behind, get help! Ask your ES or associates in practice to send some patients your way. Some additional things are: 

DOPS (direct observation of procedural skills) – your ES observes you undertaking a simple procedure on a patient such as a simple filling or radiograph

ADEPTs (a dental evaluation of performance) – again, your ES observes you undertaking treatment on your patients 

The portfolio is used to monitor your progress and help you identify areas for your improvement. Make sure you log all of your clinical activity, tutorials and reflections meticulously. I kept a tally in my surgery and if you’re nice to your nurse, she’ll do it for you! You have to complete certain sections before the end of the month and after a certain date, they will get locked. For the first few months, I created reminders for myself to complete this but it soon became a habit. 

Loupes are a fantastic addition to a dentist’s armamentarium. I cannot emphasise the difference they make to the quality of your clinical work and posture. It’s a huge expense when you’re straight out of dental school and when the GDC’s annual retention fee has burned a hole through your wallet but they are worth it! 

If like me, you went straight from school to University and have never had a full-time job, DFT will be exhausting. Don’t be alarmed if for the first few months, you come home and just fall asleep. The first few months of DFT will be physically and mentally exhausting.

You will:

Be kind to yourself and take time out. Speaking of which, take annual leave throughout the year rather than saving it all for the end. This helps prevent burnout. Remember that your fellow FDs on your scheme are going through the same thing, connect with them – sharing a problem is a problem halved! 

At dental school, you may have only used one type of obturation system or just one type of post system. Chances are, your ES will have access to equipment that you’ve not used before. Here’s your chance to use it! Of course, observe first and then give it a go. 

You’ve probably done some in dental school but be prepared to do a whole lot more. Initially, I saw it as a tick-box exercise and just wanted to get it over and done with until, my ES introduced me to the Gibbs’ reflective cycle. I urge you to take a step back after a long day and use the Gibbs’ reflective cycle to think about your day. It helps you make sense of the things that happened, what role you played, what you could have done better and what you excelled in – it’ll help you become a better clinician. 

The MJDF part 1 has two sittings: October and April. I would definitely recommend sitting this exam in your FD year as the knowledge you require is very similar to your finals. I chose to sit the exam in April (which got postponed due to the pandemic) because I wanted to completely focus on finding my feet as a FD. Some of my friends sat the exam in October and passed and were glad to have done it earlier on.