Hello and Welcome to dentaltownUK by Mike Gow, DentaltownUK Editor

Last summer, Dr Howard Farran, founder of Dentaltown came to the UK on my invitation to give workshops in London and Glasgow to a couple of small dental groups. His UK workshops were great fun and the groups enjoyed hearing his unique take on starting up and running a successful dental practice.

The meetings highlighted that there are many similarities between American and British dentistry, but that there are also some interesting differences.

It was a great opportunity for me to spend time with Howard- he’s kind of like the David Attenbourgh of dentists. He has travelled the globe meeting and studying thousands of us in all of our various habitats and environments! We talked about many things, including how Dentaltown could reach and be of interest and help to even more UK dentists than it already was. We talked about ‘dentaltownUK’.

So, after months of work between the wonderful people at Farran Media (Dentaltown’s publishing company) and Defacto Dentists (UK dental listings website and Media partner) – dentaltownUK emagazine has finally arrived, ironically exactly 9 months after Howard’s trip to the UK!

Some of you will already be familiar with the website www.dentaltown.com and it’s international discussion forum. It consists of a wide variety of boards for just about every dental topic imaginable. There are more than 4 million posts on Dentaltown.com message boards. What really sets dentaltown.com apart from other forums, is the ability to get the ‘international’ perspective from such a huge dental community. There are 220,000 dentists registered on the dentaltown forum from hundreds of countries around the world, making it the largest dental community in the world. Dentaltown connects dentists in a profession that can be rather isolating. It’s about being part of something bigger, never practicing or learning alone. It’s an avenue for dentists to share problems and passions, to ask questions—and to question answers.

There is even a Dentaltown ‘App’ that you can download!

We have very recently added a UK discussion board to allow easier discussion of matters specifically relevant or of interest to the UK only- please do go and start or join a discussion. There is even a board to discuss content from the dentaltownUK emagazines.

There is also a free ‘Classified’ section at dentaltown.com. There are already hundreds of listings including dental jobs and practice sales etc in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

While Howard was in the UK he recorded a few of his famous pod cast interviews with some UK dentists. Howard explained that many dentists have a commute to work of around an hour, and prefer to download and listen to his podcast than the doom and gloom of the radio news! With hundreds of podcasts available- your drive to and from work will never be the same again!

The Dentaltown magazine has a reach of around 300,000 dentists worldwide. With the new dentaltownUK emagazine comes an opportunity to present international cases and concepts from Dentaltown alongside those from the UK.

As you will see, we have a fantastic board of ‘Honorary Editors’ who will work to ensure that we are delivering an emagazine that you will find educational and entertaining. If you would like to contribute a case study or article please email me at mike.gow@dentaltownUK.com.

As well as case studies, articles, news, classifieds, polls, posts from the forum, some of the other regular features of dentaltownUK will include:

Through the keyhole-surgery- Home and Away: This will be an opportunity to take a look at and get ideas from practices and dentists in the UK (Home) and from around the world (Away).

The wish list: We ask dentists ‘If money were no object, what would you buy for your practice’.

dentaltownUK Students: Our student honorary editor Kishan Sheth gives an insight to life as a dental student, and draws on some of the phenomenal work being carried out in dental elective projects.

dentaltownUK Lifestyle: We are particularly excited about this section which is being headed up by ‘The Singing Dentist’ Milad Shadrood. There are growing numbers of dentists coming together on social media, sharing common interests and passions of their ‘non dental’ activities.

Time out: Traditionally a ‘time out’ in sports events is a time when you stop play and evaluate what has been happening and talk about what to do next and how to do it. In this edition we take a ‘time out’ with Ashley Latter to discover ‘seven easy steps to create more opportunities to provide more tooth whitening treatments and increase your turnover and profits’.

Work life balance: This topic deserves a regular slot in dentaltownUK and I approached Niall Campbell to be our ‘coach’. His introductory article is thought provoking and I encourage you to read it. I have my ‘axis statement’ and am already looking forward to hearing what he has to say in the April issue!

We are also keen to hear your thoughts on the emagazine and the direction that we take it in. If there is a topic you would like us to cover, or if you have any feedback or ideas - please get in touch.

Best wishes Mike Gow, dentaltownUK Editor