Although this year's British Society of Paediatric Dentistry (BSPD) Annual Conference was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BSPD Awards went ahead, and were judged virtually for the first time.
The winning Clinical Governance Prize was a service development project introducing body mass index (BMI) screening of children attending new patient appointments at the Edinburgh Dental Institute. Submitted by Jessica Large (pictured), and entitled Let's 'Get Going': Healthy weight and healthy mouths, Jessica's project identified that 14% of children who had their BMI calculated were above a healthy weight and 4% below a healthy weight.
Jessica Large, winner of the BSPD's Clinical Governance Prize 2020
Children identified as above a healthy weight were offered onward referral to 'Get Going' - a local weight management service. Children below a healthy weight were offered support through their general medical practitioner.
Dr Chris Vernazza, BSPD's honorary editor and chair of BSPD's Conference Abstracts and Prizes Committee, said: 'This is the kind of important thing that we can all be doing. It's exciting to see the impact an audit can have on best practice. BSPD's Quality Improvement Research Committee will consider this as a topic for a national audit'.
Dr Vernazza was equally enthusiastic about the undergraduate poster prize, sponsored by the BSPD Teachers Branch, won by Louise Davies, of the University of Birmingham. Her title was Investigation into the Awareness of Non-Verbal Communication Tools in Dentistry.
Dr Vernazza said: 'Effective communication with our young patients and their parents is an important part of paediatric dentistry and something we want our students to excel at. It's great to see an undergraduate leading on this'.
The annual BSPD research prize is sponsored by GSK plc and in 2020 went to Risha Sanghvi, of King's College London. Her title was Evaluating the cost effectiveness of retaining compromised first permanent molars in children.
The final award of the evening was the Clinical case prize sponsored by RA Medical whose owner, Janet Pickles, was online to congratulate Maryam Ezzeldin of University Dental Hospital, Cardiff for her paper, called A rare case of Stoneman Syndrome.
The quality of the entries to the BSPD Awards this year was very high and the organisers felt that having judging and presenting online worked extremely well.