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Only this morning I received an email from the regional orthodontic training programme director, wanting to know if their trainees could attend the Zoom webinars that Alison and I run every year for new trainees, on ‘orthodontic photography’, and ‘twin block’ treatment. I replied that we would be absolutely delighted to have the trainees join all those from the Northern Universities Consortium, indeed ‘the more the merrier’ as many postgraduates contributing to the lively question-and-answer session makes it more interesting for me and Alison, and hopefully for all the participants. This training programme director also offered to pick up any costs for the trainees attending these teaching sessions.
After discussion with Alison, we declined a fee for them joining, but suggested that if the training programme director could ensure that all of the trainees, in each of their units, had access to a dedicated camera system, to enable them to take photographs of every patient, every visit, this would probably be the single biggest contribution they could make to the quality of the postgraduates' training.
We firmly believe that if the postgraduates can be enabled to take high-quality images on a visit-by-visit basis, and if they are positively encouraged to analyse these images of their patients at every visit, then they will learn almost everything it is possible to learn from that patient episode (and vice versa).
Trainees will be able to see when a patient's treatment is going well, and this will act as positive reinforcement for whatever mechanics they decided to introduce at the last visit. This is an incredibly beneficial example of positive reinforcement. Reviewing photographs at the chairside will also highlight to them where aspects of the malocclusion are deteriorating, and treatment is going badly. This should immediately cause them to reflect on what they actually did to the patient last visit and how, with the benefit of the ‘retrospectoscope’, this was perhaps a bad idea. This is an equally useful experience, and is absolutely fundamental to them learning their trade.
There is no amount of verbiage, which current trainees are often obliged to write in clinical notes, that can transmit anywhere near the amount of information as a set of well-taken clinical photographs. A picture does indeed speak a thousand words.
Doing orthodontics without regular photographs is practising orthodontics blindfold. Entirely possible, but why in heaven's name would you? Learning or teaching high-quality orthodontics without photos, is impossible.
Maximizing the teaching/learning experience for our trainees should be the main priority of those of us responsible for teaching the next generation of clinicians. The use of high-quality clinical images, at the chairside, on a visit-by-visit basis, may not turn the trainee into the best orthodontist in the world, but it will, for sure, turn them into the best orthodontists they can ever be.