I've been a dental consultant for coming up to a year now, and while my team were very kind in letting me find my feet and settling in, I am well and truly past the honeymoon stage of a Consultant post! I am seeing the most complex patients I have ever seen in my career, in a challenging environment of long waiting lists and stretched NHS resources with healthcare staff strikes, increasing patient needs and a NHS dental access crisis. So no wonder I have barely time to breathe!

My role as a Consultant takes me out of the main dental hospital to community clinics and our district general hospital and I love these clinics seeing patients locally and setting up/building on spoke services. But this does mean when I am at work I juggle the workloads of my CDS patients, my district general patients and my dental hospital patients which takes some organisation. 

On top of that my role at Dentaid the Dental Charity is becoming increasingly busy as our team is expanding and with our first partnership with an NHS ICB to deliver a huge number of clinics in a area where patients are facing difficulties in accessing care. And my role within the British Dental Association as Young Dentist Committee Chair means squeezing in meetings left right and centre with the access crisis becoming evermore prominently in the public eye and debated in parliament. 

I often get asked on social media and when speaking at events, how do I fit it all in?! I used to really see that as a compliment and I do still value having a portfolio career and fingers in a few pies, but the past few months have seen me reflecting on what I am currently doing. 

I have been a dentist for almost 10 years and have built up various experiences across sectors. I now think it is time to really decide what I enjoy doing and refocusing on what I really enjoy. Particularly now I have a family, there is only so many hours in the week and I don't want to work myself to death. 

I think it is hard for mothers and working parents to really say they have a balance between work and personal life. I enjoy going to work as I feel like 'me' not just 'a mum', and even when I am at home with my little one I find myself thinking how can I squeeze a few emails in or a meeting. The result is yes productivity and getting stuff done, but at the end of the day I cannot tell you how tired I feel! So that is why an evening blog post has been pushed down to the bottom of the priority list for the past few months.

So is there a future for this blog? I am so proud of what I've achieved with over 9 years of typing away on this site. I still feel that glow when someone says to me they read my blog, particularly when they say it's really helped them with an aspect of their career. 

And so I will continue to make space to blog and post on here. It might to be as often as 5 years ago and I might change direction a little, but A Tooth Germ is here to stay! And of course I will continue to offer my platform to those who wish to write something themselves. I have always meant my blog to share ideas and education across Dentistry and support those coming through their careers - and even though I'm almost 10 years a dentist and a Consultant, I would still consider myself to be a Tooth Germ....