Interview


Honoured by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, orthodontic consultant Grant McIntyre tells Scottish Dental that it’s all down to one man – his uncle


T


ayside orthodontic consultant Grant McIntyre was recently honoured by the Royal College of Surgeons


of Edinburgh with a Fellowship Without Examination. It was recog- nition of the contribution he has made to the MFDS exam, the MOrth exam and the work he will do for the College in the future. However, Grant revealed that the


inspiration that set him on a path to becoming one of the leading hospital orthodontists in the country, was visiting his uncle’s practice in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, as a child. A west-coaster by birth, Grant grew up in Paisley and decided midway through his school years that a career in dentistry was for him. He said: “My uncle was a bit of a


role model for me, an independent professional who was able to make a contribution to the local community and that really sparked my interest. “Unfortunately, he passed away


when I was still in dental school, so he didn’t see me graduate, which was a real shame.” At dental school in Glasgow,


Grant found the area that really grabbed his attention was ortho- dontics. He explained: “I really enjoyed orthodontics and, on graduation (in 1993), I thought, the opportunity is there for me to pursue it. So I decided that it was the career that I wanted within dentistry and I started to plan my career jobs to fit my aim.” His VT year in Biggar in the


Borders provided the final confir- mation for Grant that a life in general practice wasn’t for him. He said: “It wasn’t a negative experi- ence at all, in fact it was wholly positive. Dentistry in practice has two elements to it, obviously there is the dental care itself but there is also the running of the business and all the pressures that come with that. “That actually confirmed for me


that orthodontics was the route for me. It was a positive decision in that I wanted to spend time with patients rather than running a business.” After VT, Grant moved away from


Scotland and embarked on an SHO job in oral surgery and orthodontics in Wigan and Manchester. After a year in the north-west, he embarked on the primary fellowship with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and then returned to Glasgow Dental Hospital to complete the Fellowship in Dental Surgery. It was at this point Grant applied


for specialty training in orthodon- tics, which brought him to Dundee and opened up the Tayside chapter in his life. Apart from a couple of years completing his orthodontic training in Glasgow, he has been based in the City of Discovery ever since. He completed his PhD in Dundee, examining the cranio- facial shape of parents of children with a cleft lip and palate, a subject that he has continued to focus on through his career. He said: “In actual fact, when it


came to looking for a consultant post, I was keen that the job would allow me to provide orthodontic care for children with a cleft lip and palate. Luckily I am still doing this today and I am still enjoying the interaction with the patients and their families.” Grant explains that the other


main driver behind his clinical work is being part of the orthognathic surgery team. He said: “As well as the cleft lip and palate patients I


“My uncle was a bit of a role model for me... an independent professional”


Grant McIntyre


am also on the orthognathic surgery team, working with people with fairly significant skeletal deformi- ties. For both the patients with clefts and the orthognathic patients, quite often the satisfaction that they express at the end of the treatment really gives me a huge buzz. That’s a big driver for me.” Grant mentioned that he also


enjoys orthognathic surgery planning and, as well as doing ceph- alometric planning, he is often to be found in the laboratory discussing individual cases and planning the occlusion on an articulator with the technical staff. Away from clinic, Grant is also


the training programme director for the orthodontic specialty registrars based in Dundee and he explains that he enjoys seeing the trainees through from the start of their training to their future careers in either specialist practice or to a consultant post. He said: “In the time I have been the programme director, it has been hugely satis- fying to see our trainees start off as very inexperienced in orthodontics, but finishing specialty training as highly skilled and highly qualified orthodontists.” As well as this, Grant explained


that he is also currently the chair of the specialty training committee for orthodontics at NES and is also involved to a lesser degree in undergraduate teaching and in foundation years training. He attributes his interest in learning and teaching to his parents, both of who were involved with education – his mother being a primary school teacher and his father a college lecturer in mechanical engineering – and they both discouraged him from a career in education. He said: “It is funny that my parents both said to me, the only career you shouldn’t contemplate is education, and here I am with it occupying quite a bit of my role these days.” Grant’s other interest is research,


and it’s something he admits to spending more time on than he should. “Being involved in studies investigating fixed appli- ances, tooth-size discrepancies, 3D imaging of smile aesthetics, CAD-CAM for cleft lip and palate patients, the Scottish cleft lip and palate electronic patient record,


Continued » Scottish Dental magazine 25


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