In this blogpost, BDS3 student, Jay Doherty describes his participation in the Aberdeen Summer Research Scholarship scheme.
Learn more about the Aberdeen Summer Research Scholarship Programme.My name is Jay Doherty and I’m one of the 3rd year dental students here at the University of Aberdeen. I initially applied for this summer research project to gain new skills regarding research and to build a portfolio of research that can strengthen my application for DCT in the future should I decide to enter specialty training. Dr Lalli and I met up a few times during the summer to discuss what we’d like to say in our project and what the overarching theme we’d like to write about was.
Our research project set out to open a conversation about the carbon footprint and environmental impact of dentistry – in particular, surgical extractions of teeth. Previous studies have indicated that around 40% of the overall impact came not from materials wastage and disposal or even water usage, but travel to and from the practice.
We aimed to ask the question of whether patients would be willing to alter their mode of transport to the practice for a procedure if they were advised to do so and if it were possible. We sought to work out roughly what distance patients would be willing to travel using sustainable transport methods such as cycling and walking. Additionally, we tried to work out the general opinion among a small sample of dental health professionals about whether or not a patient should partake in light exercise post-extraction in order to reduce the environmental impact.
Ultimately, this project may be one of the first to ask these questions and as such, it was unlikely that we’d be able to offer a definitive answer one way or another. We simply wished to open a conversation about the possibility of encouraging alternative methods of transport. To do this, more research is needed to assess the effects of mild to moderate exercise on patient recovery, particularly extraction sites as the current advice is to tell patients not to do anything that may dislodge the clot for risk of unnecessary bleeding or poor healing.
The hope is that in the future, dental practitioners may be in a better position to recommend alternative, sustainable methods of transport to extraction appointment based on supporting evidence that states that there isn’t any increased risk to the patient.