25 January 2018
Dental students get involved in King's Wellbeing
King’s College London is currently celebrating Wellbeing Month with activities and initiatives available to staff and students to help create a supportive, healthy and satisfying environment for them. As part of Health Week, King’s dental students organised a pop up stall at Guy’s Hospital, giving staff free oral healthcare advice and explaining how they can “self-refer” to become a patient at the Dental Hospital at Guy’s.
Patients at the GSTT Dental Hospital are seen by our students, with supervision from clinical teachers. Giving King’s students real world experience, patients to practise their skills and techniques on are a vital part of the learning experience. Encouraging staff to sign up to the student care list and self-refer is a great way to not only help the students with their studies, but staff can also get free dental services too!
Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Prosthodontics, Dr Rupert Austin agrees: “We had lots of great interest from the staff passing by and signed up many of them for a Dental Check up with the students.”
“The waiting list for Student Care is still open and we welcome more self-referrals from staff. Any staff who are interested can look at the GSTT website or email gst-tr.UndergraduateReferrals@nhs.net for more information.”
As well as signing up staff for a dental check-up, students also offered free oral healthcare advice. Ross Hills, 4th year Dental student and Co-President of the Smile Society said: “It was a really successful event being run as part of King’s Wellbeing Month, encouraging people to make sure they take time out of their day to look after themselves.”
“In this case, looking after their oral health by signing up for a dental check-up. The Smile Society were more than happy to help out; being involved in Health Week was just one of the events we are running this term to promote the importance of good oral health.”
More information on Wellbeing Month can be found here: https://internal.kcl.ac.uk/staff/experience/wellbeing-month.aspx