I’m Anne Budenberg, and I’m a dentist with over 30- years experience in NHS and private practice, including roles in secondary care, dental education, risk management and mentoring. 

I started this podcast to show the diversity of views, and choices dentists and dental care professionals can, and do make, on their career paths, and about creating a fulfilling career. This is for anyone interested in UK dental careers - for those working, or planning to work as a dentist or dental care professional in the UK. Dental careers are no longer simply linear, or binary choices, but we have many possibilities for hopping on and off whichever career path, or ‘squiggly career,’ you chose to take.

Sometimes the path is planned; at other times, it takes unexpected twists and turns, and you end up at a place you did not expect to find yourself.

‘Squiggly careers’ is a phrase coined by career development consultants, Helen Tupper & Sarah Ellis, and I love this concept, and the fact that every ‘squiggly career’ will be drawn differently, and is unique.

We’ll be exploring some of the opportunities, challenges, and adapting to change throughout your career, as the landscape changes.

In this episode I’m speaking to Prof Rhiannon Edwards, BSc. Econ, M.A., D.Phil., Hon. MFPH Professor of Health Economics and the founding Director of Health Economics research at Bangor University. She specialises in economic evaluation of public health interventions, and particularly behavioural interventions, including dentistry.

We’re talking about Health Economics, what it is, and why it’s relevant to dentistry.

Prof Rhiannon Edwards leads the Public Health Economics Research Group (PHERG) at CHEME which takes a life-course approach to the methodology and conduct of economic evaluation of public health interventions. 

Prior to being at Bangor University, Rhiannon was Lecturer in Health Economics at Liverpool University with an Honorary position with Liverpool Health Authority.

She was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Excellence in Health Promotion Economics, University of Chicago. She published papers on choice in health care and co-authored an international comparison of waiting lists in public health care systems following her fellowship to the USA.

Please join us, and don’t forget to share your feedback & ideas on what’s important to you about this topic.

References:

·     Cost‐effectiveness Analysis of the Dental RECUR Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial: Evaluating a Goal‐oriented Talking Intervention to Prevent Reoccurrence of Dental Caries in Children (Published, Jan 2022)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9021113/

·     Dentistry and why it’s a great career (July 2017)

https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2017.617

·     GROW model

https://www.performanceconsultants.com/grow-model