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Further to our letter to the editor in the October 2012 issue of Dental Update, the FGDP in Scotland commissioned a cartoon series called Dr Drill which we published in our CPD magazine in October.
We intended it to be a light-hearted, tongue in cheek satire which poked fun at some of our dental colleagues who seem hell bent on chasing these dental awards year in year out.
More importantly, we hoped it would create some meaningful debate on the place these dental awards should have in the profession.
We were inundated with messages of support from GDPs across Scotland and further afield. We had a hunch that a lot of dentists were getting fed up with these awards but the strength of some of the support took us by surprise. We feel that we have tapped into an undercurrent of frustration within the profession here.
Interestingly, we received no pro-award emails, other than from the editors of FMC and Scottish Dental Magazine, who both assured us that the reason they run the awards is that they are ‘very popular within the profession’. But they would say that considering the money they make from running these awards, not to mention the easy copy they gain from it.
We have even set up a blog to help bring this debate to a wider dental audience: http://fgdpscotland.wordpress.com/
We would be grateful if we could get contributions from as many dentists as possible to help put these awards in the context they deserve. We would be most interested to hear from dentists who think the awards are a good idea and their reasons why.
In the meantime, we would like to share Dr Drill with you – see page 589 for an example of a cartoon panel. If you want to see more of Dr Drill, go to our website http://www.fgdp-scotland.org