First degree hotspots for OMFS recruitment 1967-2010: dental and medical schools where OMFS specialists and trainees were more likely to start their careers.

Abstract

Evidence around careers shows that many surgeons were inspired early in their career and this was often based on their undergraduate experience. In this context we have reviewed the location of the first degrees of oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) consultants and specialty trainees to look for any patterns or trends. It has been shown that there is variation across medical schools when core surgical trainee recruitment is analysed. To our knowledge no previous paper has undertaken a similar analysis of medical and dental schools in the context of OMFS. The first-degree universities of OMFS specialists and trainees were compiled from the Medical and Dental Register, tabulated and analysed. There were 680 entries in total with dates of graduation ranging from 1967 - 2010. The relative frequency of first-degree locations based on the number of current places for medical and dental students was calculated to aid comparison. There are 'hot-spots' from where many OMFS specialists originate and also universities that rarely or never produce OMF surgeons. Reviewing these figures in the context of the number of places available to students and against time, points to areas where OMFS appears to be promoted, and others were the specialty has a low impact. The University of London leads the way for both medicine and dentistry-first trainees by a considerable margin. Glasgow is the next most productive for dentistry and Nottingham for medicine. The 13 current medical schools from which no OMFS specialists or trainees have originated are Brighton, Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin, Exeter, Hull, Keele, Lancaster, Norwich, Plymouth, Swansea, University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), and Warwick. Other new medical schools are opening this year. There are opportunities for all OMFS units and training rotations to look at 'best practice' for OMFS recruitment and apply as many inspiring interventions as they can in their local medical and dental schools, and in foundation and core training programmes.