Joint Dento-legal training workshop

A scene from a unique training event between the Department of Law and the Dental Hospital and School that took place earlier this year. The event was a Mock Court involving honours' students from the law departments' Health Care: Law and Administration course and Senior House Officers (SHO) from the Dental Hospital and School undergoing service based post graduate training.

A case study on alleged dental negligence formed the basis for a civil court claim. Law students Catherine O'Neill and Sam Magee argued the case for the patient while Nicola O'Neill and Caroline McCloy defended the dentists.

Actors from Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, played the role of the aggrieved patient and her husband, while SHOs Suzanne Blacker and Firas Daoudi played the role of the accused dentists. Expert witnesses, played by SHOs Keri Weatherhogg, Paul Sharma and Mhairi Walker, were called for both sides and managed to survive a testing cross-examination.

After a closely fought contest, the mixed audience of lawyers and dentists found in favour of the defenders, the dentists, underlining the point that medical or dental negligence claims may be easy to make but are extremely hard to win.

This event was one of a number of inter-disciplinary skills sessions run in recent months by Fiona Raitt, Course Organiser of the Health Care course and John Radford of the Unit of Comprehensive Restorative Care with Jan Clarkson of the Dental Health Services Research Unit. All three members of staff are developing further inter-disciplinary skills work for the next year.

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