The Dr Tom Bereznicki Charitable Educational Foundation

A new charity is aiming to fill the clinical skills gap for recent dental graduates with affordable training courses.

While teaching at final year undergraduate level at King’s College London, during and after the COVID pandemic, dentist Tom Bereznicki witnessed a decline in students’ clinical experience.

Gone are the days of undergraduate dental students experiencing a significant amount of clinical experience during their studies. The undergraduate bachelor’s in dental surgery course now has an ever-widening breadth of content to fit into the curriculum, with the vital hands-on experience gained by treating patients being squeezed out, leading to a clinical skills gap upon graduation.

This gap widened further for those students whose education was interrupted by COVID and a subsequent shortage of patients, who were frightened of attending in case they caught the virus.

Tom was determined to do something to address it. After discussing the issue with like-minded colleagues in early 2023, he decided to set up and self-fund a charity to promote education aimed at dentists who have been qualified for up to five years. In September 2023, the Charity Commission approved the formation of the Dr Tom Bereznicki Charitable Educational Foundation.

Accessible training

With the funding available, the foundation cannot provide free education for every early career dentist, but it does aim to promote and deliver education at an affordable price for those with the desire to develop their skills.

Tom was aware that many postgraduate courses are extremely expensive, with fees often reaching the high hundreds if not four figures, making them rarely affordable for newly qualified dentists. So even if they can identify where they need additional education, it is not necessarily accessible to them. This was something Tom wanted the foundation to help counter.

One topic that is rarely touched upon in depth at undergraduate level is occlusion, and yet the success of any type of restoration is reliant on occlusal harmony for long term success. However, courses on occlusion are difficult to find, so Tom has set about filling the void. He has convened a panel of eminent dentists with a special interest in this field, who are prepared to donate their time to the foundation and speak at a taster symposium on the subject.

The occlusion symposium will be held at Kensington Town Hall in London on Saturday 5 April 2025 and host up to 450 dentists. It is set to feature an impressive speaker line-up, including Paul Tipton, Ken Harris, Tif Qureshi, Shiraz Khan, Koray Feran and, of course, Tom himself. Unlike most courses, the registration fee will be deliberately set low at £75 to ensure it is affordable. It will only be open to early career dentists who qualified between 2019 and 2023.

If the event proves successful, it will be held annually. The foundation is also considering plans to hold the symposium in the north of the country as well as London and to arrange symposiums on other topics at equally low prices.

Competition

The symposium is just one initiative organised by the foundation. Its first, run in association with GC and the College of General Dentistry, was an aesthetic restorative case competition for those entering dental foundation training in 2023/24. Fifteen winners each received a fully funded place on a two-day composite layering course at GC’s Education Campus in Belgium. The prize even included international travel, hotel accommodation and meals.

The winners travelled in July this year and found the course to be an invaluable addition to their education, equipping them with a deeper understanding of restorative techniques and other skills. Even entrants who were not successful in the competition told Tom that they had learnt important skills from the application process alone.

Following the success of the inaugural College of General Dentistry-GC award for foundation dentists, the competition is set to be re-launched in early autumn. This time it will expand to include dental therapists as well as dentists who graduated in 2024 or who are enrolled on dental foundation training or dental vocational training in 2024/25.

The competition will also be open to new graduates in the Republic of Ireland as well as the UK. Eighteen winners will travel to Belgium in July 2025. If you want to find out more or enter the 2024/25 award, visit cgdent.uk/cgdent-gc-award/.

Future plans

Also in the pipeline, with the support of Dentsply Sirona and the College of General Dentistry, the foundation is currently adding the finishing touches to an advanced aesthetic case competition open to dentists who graduated in the UK and the Republic of Ireland between 2020 and 2023, which will allow around 30 winners to attend a two-day course, the details of which are still being finalised. It will hopefully be ready to launch later in the autumn.

In the meantime, to better reflect its target audience, the foundation’s board of trustees has decided to expand and has brought on board four younger dentists. It has now welcomed Chris Leech, Karina Kowlaski, Balraj Sohal and Ronan Lee onto the board. They will be working on other projects that are currently in the gestation period.

The foundation warmly welcomes all those in the profession willing to offer their support to its various projects, with a view to expanding its activities in future.

As the foundation gains momentum, it is hoped that it can grow further and extend its reach to ensure more of the dentists of tomorrow are fully equipped with the knowledge and practical skills they need to truly excel in the profession.

To find out more about the Dr Tom Bereznicki Charitable Educational Foundation, visit Tom’s website at tombereznicki.com/trust/