D
espite his softly spoken and unassuming demeanour, Andrew Lamb is not one to shirk the tough decisions. Even so, he acknowledges
that his decision to step down as national director of the BDA in Scotland after nearly a decade in the hotseat was one of the most diffi cult he has ever made. He said: “I didn’t want to leave the BDA. I
thoroughly enjoyed my time, right up until the day I left, actually. “But I really do think it is easy to carry
on doing that and I think the hard decision is to make a break and go off and do all the things that you have always wanted to do.” Born and brought up in Surrey, Andrew’s
parents moved to Glasgow when he was ı6. With a doctor for a father and a nurse for a mother, choosing a career in medicine was maybe not a huge surprise, but Andrew revealed that he wasn’t particularly interested in being a medical doctor. He said: “I was always keen on helping
people and I didn’t really want to be a doctor, so I decided on dentistry. It was a profession where you could practise manual skills, treat and look after people, and I preferred that in my mind to ever wanting to be a doctor.” Andrew graduated from Glasgow Dental
School in ı972 and stayed on at the hospital, fi rstly as a house offi cer, then a registrar, before being offered a lecturing role in prosthodontics in ı976. He then completed his postgraduate training at Glasgow, becoming a senior lecturer in ı984. With that role, Andrew became an
honorary consultant and he explained that he revelled in the variety the role offered. He said: “One thing I especially enjoyed was the contact with the students. There was a great sense of satisfaction involved with putting over whatever skills you have. “I also very much enjoyed dealing with
patients who had real problems and who had been referred in by general dentists. It was very satisfying treating those people and treating them successfully.” From there, he completed his doctorate
in dental surgery in ı990, a combination of restorative dentistry and oral medicine. The topic he chose was burning mouth syndrome (BMS), as he explained: “The cause of BMS is multifactorial it can be a problem related to the tissues themselves on which dentures sit or it could be the dentures themselves that are causing the problems. It was a very interesting time in my life and I enjoyed that.” In ı995, Andrew was appointed the
associate dean for dental education in the dental school in Glasgow, a role he held for
“It was a pretty radical plan, it made some major changes to the way dental services were delivered”
fi ve years. Then, in 2002, the BDA’s Scottish secretary Alastair MacLean announced his retirement and Andrew applied for the role. A member of the BDA since his student
days, Andrew became the University of Glasgow’s representative on the asso- ciation’s academic committee in ı982, becoming chairman in ı997, which meant he became a member of the BDA’s UK Council. At the time of Alastair MacLean’s
retirement, Andrew had already decided to retire from the university to seek a new challenge. So, the timing was perfect and he was appointed national director for Scotland in 2003. When asked what he felt his biggest
achievement was during his time in offi ce, he said: “This is a really diffi cult question because an awful lot of what you do within the BDA is long term. I think the biggest achievement that I feel I have made is building up good working relationships with the Scottish Government. “Now, this doesn’t mean we always got
our way with the Scottish Government, but I think we developed good relationships with both politicians and civil servants. “I think part of the secret is down to
networking with them when they were in opposition. I think it is often easier to meet with and converse with MSPs in opposi- tion. But I’ve met with politicians from all parties and I think the working relation- ships we have are considerably better than they were a few years ago. “But it was not just me – it was very much
a team effort. We worked very closely with the elected members, the committee members and also the other staff members within the BDA to develop and maintain those relationships.” Not long after Andrew joined the BDA,
the Scottish Government consulted on the way forward for both adult and children’s dentistry, a consultation that became the Dental Action Plan in 2005. Andrew said: “It was a pretty radical plan – it made some major changes to the way the dental services in Scotland were delivered, and the way that they were funded. “The Lib-Lab coalition invested
substantial sums of money at that time – from a baseline funding of about £200 million in 2005, three years later it
Continued » Scottish Dental magazine 23
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