Service increment for teaching and research (SIFTR): the Southampton experience

NHS funding for dental undergraduate human disease teaching in the UK: a 20-year review

Introduction This study identifies funding of NHS services supporting dental students' teaching over the last 20 years, focusing on human disease (HD) teaching.

Aims To identify NHS funding for education in UK dental schools following publication of the 1997 General Dental Council curriculum introducing specific funding for HD teaching and the years 2015/16 to 2019/20.

Material and methods Searches of the medical literature, grey literature (government and regulatory authority reports, legislative articles) and freedom of information requests to hospitals helping to deliver teaching.

Results There are few publications describing current funding of dental undergraduate teaching. Freedom of information requests gave data for NHS hospital allocations for teaching both clinical dentistry and HD. HD funding has dropped by £2 million in five years.

Conclusions NHS Trusts linked to dental schools receive monies to deliver teaching and offset costs of accommodating students. Tracking these funds over 20 years has seen some schools lose up to £1 million of HD funding and some lose it all. Greater transparency regarding funding for HD delivery would help improve teaching. Increasing numbers of older patients, with a greater chronic disease burden who are retaining teeth into later life, need graduating dentists with good medical knowledge to deliver safe care.

Graduating dental students need a sound understanding of medicine relevant to the safe care of their patients.

Foundation dentist (FD) trainers in UK general dental practice need to know their FD has the knowledge to safely care for their patients.

As taxpayers, the readers need to know that NHS funds allocated for dental student undergraduate teaching are directed appropriately, especially for human disease funds into general hospital budgets.

General Dental Council (GDC) staff charged with revising and developing curricula need to be aware that human disease was previously recognised by the GDC as a key element of undegraduate teaching and needs to remain so, with emphasis in future curriculums.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

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Threats to academic neurosurgery in the United Kingdom: a personal view

Money, or lack of it, is but one, albeit very important, threat to academic neurosurgery. This review has rambled over some of the other minefields and self-inflicted hurdles. The path of academic progress is long and tortuous. Time has to be found in neurosurgery to examine critically the opportunities and threats posed by a changing world to our goals of establishing standards of patient care, research, and the flexible training of the next generation.

Misuse of ecstasy

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