Last updated 11:28, Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Daniela Vargas was among 17,000 patients who lost their NHS dentist when a dental practice in Carlisle went private almost three years ago.Professor Lawrence Mair, head of the School of Dentistry, said: “It is an innovative course, it’s a progressive way of training dentists.The 32 students are not only the first to join the course, they are the first to benefit from impressive state-of-the-art facilities.

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The 27-year-old forensic science graduate is now one of the first on a newly-created course designed specifically to bring more dentists into the north west. And from September, she will be back home in Carlisle treating patients at a new dental centre at the Cumberland Infirmary.

It is a career choice that could prove very lucrative. General dental practitioners now earn on average £80,000 a year. Those in the NHS earn half that but hospital consultants can earn in the region of £100,000.

Daniela said: “It sounds funny but [after the forensic science course] I decided I wanted to work with the living, I wanted that interaction with patients.

“My dad wanted me to be like him and become a vet but I was already thinking about something in medicine and that was when I was a patient at the Nixon practice and I lost my dentist. I was on the other side of it and knew there was a shortage when I found out about the course.”

At the height of the crisis, 26,000 Cumbrians were on a list waiting for a new NHS dentist. Dentists were leaving the NHS in droves as controversial new contracts were being introduced. The numbers looking to train up were also taking a nosedive.

Regional educational, dental and medical leaders joined forces to look at ways of tackling the shortfall. They wanted to recruit and – possibly more importantly – retain new dentists.

The four-year Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree was drawn up and included proposals to create a new dental school in Preston with four satellite centres, training students in a revolutionary new way.

The intake is limited to 32 sought-after places and a £5.25 million School of Dentistry was built at the University of Central Lancashire.

Four dental education centres (DECs) have been built at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle, Accrington, Morecambe and Blackpool.

They will be opening over the next 12 months offering patients on the NHS waiting list routine treatment and emergency care. Students will be working alongside trained staff.

“Traditionally dentists have been trained in dental hospitals and by their nature they’ve trained in complicated work but here they are trained to meet the needs of routine patients with routine work.

“And the environment in which we train them is similar to what they would work in. It is the holistic approach, with rooms specialising in different things like radiology or the false teeth room.”

Students begin treating real patients within eight months of starting the dental degree, but only after passing a tough clinical readiness test to prove they are ready. After their first year’s study in Preston, students are sent to one of the four satellite centres.

Eight are moving to Carlisle. Former Morton School pupil Daniela will be joined by fellow Cumbrians Jason Mandle, 23, who has travelled to Preston almost daily for his studies from his family home in Shap, and Fiona Ashley, from Distington.

Jason, who went to Ullswater Community College in Penrith, Fiona, 25, and Daniela will be joined by Mohamed Sugow, former physiotherapist Julie Anderton, 31, from Preston, James Bathie, from north Wales, Afruza Khatun, from Newcastle, and Glaswegian Lisa Johnston.

They will be training under the watchful eyes of tutors John Mellor and Kumar Datla.

Their on-the-job training will be topped up with further lectures, some via video-links with the dentistry school in Preston.

Tutor John Mellor said: “They will initially do clinical work at the dental education centres two days a week. It will then grow out and we hope they will be doing placements in practices in their final year.

“The primary care trusts involved are already working to identify local practices which could be training practices.

“They’ll be doing routine things like scale and polishes, fillings and simple extractions.”

He added: “Research has shown that most dentists stay on in the area in which they were trained. They get to know the profession there and get to be part of the local environment.”

It is not an undergraduate course that can be done straight after A-levels. Each student must already have a degree, and a good one at that.

Each of the 32 in this first intake has either a 2:1 or first class degree in mainly biomedical sciences.

Since September, the students have had to learn vast amounts of scientific theory including intricate anatomy.

They have also had to pass a minimum of 13 exams since January to ensure they are ready to see real patients.

As well as oral science, the students have also had to learn about an array of dental-related areas such as prosthetics (dentures) and radiology (X-rays).

Although not necessarily skills they will have to use, course leaders are providing the training so the students can properly instruct colleagues once qualified to do so in a surgery.

Local actors were also brought in to act out role-playing scenarios to see if the students were ready to deal with patients in a surgery situation.

Biomedical sciences graduate Fiona Ashley, whose relatives live in Commonside, Distington, said: “Compared to other dental schools, we are getting to see patients and that was something that attracted me.

“Also some schools have 100 students. We only have 32 and have forged close relationships.”

She added: “We’re all looking forward to coming to Carlisle. We are quite a little family already but we are going to be based in Carlisle for three years and it means we can get involved in the community. For me, my boyfriend lives over the border so we’ll be closer to each other.”

The £5.25 million dental school at UCLan is the first to be purpose-built in the UK for more than a century.

It boasts the most advanced “phantom heads” room in Europe, in which students can learn dental procedures on computerised manikins.

Yet on the day Learning visited, tutors were also using Plasticine from a toy shop to help students during a denture-making class.

The fledgling course is already proving hugely popular.

Competition was fierce with 189 applications for the first 32 places. A similar number of applications came in for the 32 spots starting in September.

UCLan is now considering applications for the autumn 2009 intake.

The health and education consortium behind the new course and dental school is made up of the universities of Cumbria, Liverpool, Lancaster and Central Lancashire as well as NHS North West, primary care trusts and hospital trusts.