Specialty Trainee in Dental Public Health wins a prize at a UK conference

11-04-17

Mae'r digwyddiad hwn wedi dod o wefan allanol ac mae ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig

Anwen Cope, a Specialty Trainee in Dental Public Health was recently awarded the Roger Anderson Poster Prize at the Spring Scientific Conference of the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry, UK.

Anwen Cope said, ‘I am pleased that our Dental Public Health colleagues from other UK countries thought that what we are doing in Wales is a valuable work. Antibiotic prescribing for dental conditions is not just about reducing the numbers of antibiotics but also about patients getting the most appropriate dental care.’

Anup Karki, Dental Public Health Team lead and the principal investigator of the project said ‘Congratulations to Anwen on her success and thanks to Raylene, Public Health Wales’ R&D office and others who provided support to Anwen. This project is a part of our long term work of developing a system that produces accurate dental prescribing profiles of individual dentists, practices and health boards in Wales. When fully developed, we should have a system in Wales that not only triggers quality improvement actions but also facilitates research to test different interventions to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in dentistry in Wales.’

Mark Griffiths, PHW R&D manager, said, ‘we are pleased that one of the projects we supported was successful and that the dental public health team has established a relationship with a research team at Cardiff University School of Dentistry which will enable collaborations for further research.’

There is evidence that many educational and non-clinical factors influence antibiotic prescribing in dentistry and providing practitioners with personalised feedback on their prescribing could reduce the number of antibiotics prescribed by dental practitioners in Wales. The analyses undertaken as part of this project indicate that with some small changes to existing data collection systems, it is possible to produce accurate and robust personalised feedback profiles. Since 2009, the Dental Public Health team has been working with multiple teams in Wales and introduced multiple ‘interventions’ in the system that has resulted in a 22% reduction in the number of antibiotic items prescribed by dentists in Wales.

BASCD COPE.pdf