TGG 2009
This year has been a busy one for the group. We have worked on a number of new ideas and conducted our regular meetings through the year. Fortunately, in our favour we had a good geographical spread within the committee and an army of excellent local reps representing all 16 orthodontic teaching units in the UK which helped instituting changes and disseminating information. This year we managed to achieve the following goals:
1.Introduced a TGG Trainer Award
This prize is intended to reward the efforts of a trainer in recognition of their commitment, time and effort towards the training of orthodontic trainees. This is an annual national award with all regional units nominating the best trainer in their region for the award. The first best trainer award was won by Mr Steven Rudge, Consultant Orthodontist at Liverpool Dental and Halton General Hospitals and presented at this year’s BOC.
2.A Guide for prospective applicants to Orthodontics
The TGG has put together a 40 page booklet to assist prospective applicants for Orthodontics with their application process. This is intended to provide information and guide applicants through the application process but is by no means a definitive training guide and does not replace the Gold guide in this aspect. We are also most grateful to the BOS Trustees, the UTG, the COG and Laura Mitchell at RCS Eng for their assistance and valuable comments in completing this booklet. The guide has received a tremendous interest in the profession and is available free of charge as a pdf document from the TGG secretary (tggsec@hotmail.com) or online from the BOS and RCSEng websites.
3. TGG spring meeting and ISFE Day
The committee organised two very successful annual meetings, the TGG spring meeting on February 10th and the ISFE day on July 13th which were attended by a record number of delegates. For the first time for these meetings, the TGG committee and BOS office staff formatted programme booklets for both events which were well received by the delegates. We are most grateful to Ann Wright, Ann Humphrys, Jaki Walker and Tony Kearney for their work in putting together these booklets and helping with the running of these events. Both events received very positive feedback with delegates asking for similar meetings next year.
4.TGG Day for prospective applicants to orthodontics
TGG organised a day entirely devoted to prospective applicants interested in applying for orthodontics. It was intended as a fact finding mission with tips on applying as well as the personal experiences of current trainees to be shared with the prospective applicants. It was held on Thursday November 12th at the BOS, head office in London. The day proved to be overwhelming oversubscribed with interest from people as far away as Ireland, Poland and Pakistan. The feedback received has been very positive and we are looking at a bigger venue next year. We are most grateful to Professor Hunt, Professor McDonald, Liz Jones, Les Joffe and Steve Jones for their excellent lectures on this day.
5.TGG surveys
We carried out four surveys within our membership on issues ranging from factors affecting prospective applicants to orthodontics to changing patterns of orthodontic treatment amongst recently qualified specialists. All four surveys were presented as posters at the BOC in Edinburgh and are available to view on the TGG website.
6. International Trainee Rep
In recognition of the increased numbers of trainees from outside the UK and EU, the TGG have created a new position on the committee of International Trainee Representative. The role of this person will be to highlight issues and concerns affecting trainees from outside the UK.We have also introduced a parallel programme session for international postgraduate trainees at our next postgraduate meeting in 2010 in recognition of the increased numbers of international post graduate trainees training in conjunction with home specialist registrars. The programme will include lectures that will be of interest to Home and international students in different parallel sessions for part of the meeting.
TGG Committee are most grateful to the BOS Trustees in particular Nigel Harradine, David Tidy, Alison Murray, Les Joffe and Helen Knight for their assistance and support throughout the year. Our thanks also to Mary Lo, who has been extremely helpful with website issues. Finally, we are also grateful to our all the SpRs and FTTAs who acted as regional reps for the TGG this year and gave up their time to help the TGG committee. They include: Lorraine Barreto, Hash Popat, Lorna Dobbyn, Amish Patel, Jinesh Shah, Roisin Tohill, Sat Bhopal, Imran Shafi, Sandy Karnezi, Mariyah Nazir, Hem Shah, Sarah Henwood, Roz Walker and Marissa Swinburne.
Lastly we would like to thank Ormco, TOC, Orthocare and Forestadent for their support in sponsoring our events.
Sadaf Khan, Clare McNamara and Jinesh Shah
