Lawyer Monthly Magazine August 2020 Edition

One of the biggest problems facing the legal profession currently is the inability to find suitable experts for a case. What should lawyers look for, when a case involves dental issues? An expert has to be not only highly trained and experienced in his field as a clinician but also has to have a vast and up to date knowledge of the current evidence-based literature. In my opinion, dental specialist and consultants are ideal choices for expert opinion as they undergo years of structured education and training, working in the academic and hospital environments and are usually involved in delivering structured teaching and training, as well as ongoing research. They provide leadership, educational and clinical mentorship roles to junior trainees and as such have the highest requirements for quality control with strong risk analysis and management skills. Equally, highly experienced practitioners ideally with academic postgraduate qualifications can offer similar skill sets required for good expert witness reporting. The expert witness report should provide unambiguous and concise advice based on the best analysis of the facts of the case guided by the best evidence available from the literature. The expert witness must include all relevant information and give a balanced opinion based on facts. However, if there is not enough information to reach a conclusion on a particular point, this must be made clear. Dentists are now twice as likely to be sued than they were 10 years ago according to figures from Dental Protection. Why is this the case? Delivery of satisfactory dental treatment and its long-term success and maintenance requires complex surgical and restorative procedures using a variety of highly specialised products, biomaterials and equipment. These interact with the host tissues both biologically and mechanically. Therefore, dentists who provide dental implant treatment are required to develop up-to-date evidence- based knowledge and competence in a vast range of treatments and employ safe and proven products and techniques. In the last couple of decades, dentistry has undergone a rapid technological advancement with the introduction of new materials, techniques and high-end elective procedures such as cosmetic dentistry, digital dentistry and dental implantology. Dentists are increasingly under pressure to master and provide more these, technically challenging, full spectrum and expensive treatments in their practices. In many areas, technology has developed faster than science and education. Most of these high-end procedures are not yet taught in the undergraduate curriculum and dentists are having to attend courses run by individual dentists skilled in these procedures. Moreover, some dentists are under pressure to offer these techniques before they have undergone full training or developed sufficient experience. Unfortunately, some of these courses on offer are not well structured or quality assured and therefore some of the clinicians may be inadequately trained. The complexity of some of these treatments is such that very few clinicians can develop sufficient skills to provide a full spectrum of all of these advanced treatments. Furthermore, dentistry is becoming more specialised and it is becoming essential that complex treatments are provided by clinicians of different ability and skills all working together as part of a multi- disciplinary team. Unfortunately, dentists mostly work in isolation in their practices 65 AUG 2020 | WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM EXPERT WITNESS Professor Cemal Ucer BDS, MSc, PhD, FDTF Ed, Specialist Oral Surgeon