Interview D
erek Richards’ passion for evidence-based dentistry has seen him work not just throughout the UK, but also around the world. And now,
as one of the founders and the current director for the Centre for Evidence- Based Dentistry, he has brought the centre up to Dundee. Originally from Caerphilly in South
Wales, Derek completed his undergraduate studies at Cardiff Dental School, graduating in ı977. After a brief spell in the community and a job in Bristol doing general duties, he moved into oral surgery and registrar jobs in Nottingham and then Inverness. He then moved back down south to Oxfordshire, where he took a general prac- tice job in David Cameron’s constituency of Witney. However, after two and a half years
in general practice, Derek decided that this wasn’t the career for him. “I’d probably spent too much time in the salaried services prior to that, to be honest,” he said. After a short break from dentistry where he took on some locum jobs for friends, an opportunity came up to go back into the salaried service and he subsequently joined the Oxfordshire Community Dental Service. This new role provided the opportunity
to do some postgraduate training through a bursary scheme and Derek wasted no time in enrolling on the diploma in public health at the Eastman Dental Institute. Unfortunately, the bursary couldn’t stretch to the full masters so, keen to forge a career in dental public health, he was advised to do the fellowship and was then successful in applying for a public health post in Berkshire. It was during his specialty training in
dental public health, that his involvement in the growing evidence-based healthcare movement was kindled. Derek’s lead trainer in Berkshire was the late Alan Lawrence, who was secretary for the specialist society for dental public health. He had just completed a regional oral health strategy with Muir Gray, who was at that time the regional director of public health in Oxfordshire. Muir, one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration and the national electronic library, had also just brought David Sackett on board to help establish the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford. Derek said: “I started on ı August ı994
and, later that month, I was sitting in the canteen of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford with Muir Gray, David Sackett and my boss Alan Lawrence talking about evidence-based healthcare. It was at this point that Muir turned to Alan and said:
“We have always run workshops and I work closely with a US colleague”
‘Now you’ve got a trainee, you can start the centre for evidence-based dentistry’.” And so the Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry (CEBD) was born. Derek became involved with the Oxford
Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP), spending a lot of time with Amanda Burls, one of the leading lights in the CASP UK Network, providing workshops on critical appraisal skills. It was then decided it was time to run
a workshop on evidence-based dentistry to garner support and interest from the profession. This first workshop took place at Templeton College in Oxford in December ı994 and attracted some big names, including people from the Department of Health, the BDA and representatives from the Faculty of Dental Surgery, among others. The two main outcomes from the
workshop was a plan for the centre and a journal. A steering committee was put together to start developing a pres- ence for the centre and discussions took place with Mike Grace, the editor of the BDJ, which was published by Oxford Medical Knowledge. The journal, Evidence-Based Dentistry, initially came out as a supplement for the BDJ and in 2000 became an independent journal, being indexed on Medline in 2004. After Derek finished his training, he
took over a consultant post in dental public health in Berkshire, working very closely with the Oxford region. However, due to changes within the Oxford region and the NHS in general, Derek and his wife, who is Scottish, started looking at oppor- tunities to move up to Scotland. Derek
already had links to Scotland through his time in Inverness earlier in his career and working with the Dental Health Services Research Unit (DHSRU) in Dundee on the development of evidence-based healthcare. So, in 2003, Derek moved north of the
border to take on a part-time role in Forth Valley as consultant in dental public health. He said: “This was attractive because it meant that I could do my dental public health activity part time and I could develop the evidence-based dentistry element the rest of the time, so that was quite a nice move.” His role has changed a bit during the last
few years – he now provides dental public health support as part of a network to the five health boards in the east – Tayside, Forth Valley, Fife, Lothian and Borders. And, following the recent changes in the structure at Dundee Dental School, the opportunity arose to move the CEBD into the school itself. Derek explained that the centre has never
really had a formal home, apart from the early days when he and a couple of dental public health colleagues shared an office in Oxford. Instead, it has existed virtually, providing training and workshops around the country and often further afield. He said: “We have always run workshops and I work quite closely with a colleague from the States, Rick Niederman, who is the director of the Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry in New York. We’ve also done work with the American Dental Associa- tion and other regular courses in the states,
Continued » Scottish Dental magazine 27
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