Mentoring and reflection with the Faculty of Dental Trainers

Why did you choose mentoring and reflection as the theme of the FDT’s Third Annual Meeting? What impact do you think this has on patient safety?

Reflection raises awareness of your own clinical performance and enhances the ability to make changes. Recognising the need to make changes and improve the quality of clinical care directly impacts on patient safety. Good mentoring facilitates good reflection.

What impact do human factors have?

It has been shown that there are links between errors that can be attributed to human factors and patient safety. This is why a number of healthcare specialties, eg surgeons and anaesthetists, have developed tools to assess non-technical skills and human factors in the workplace. They have followed on from the aircraft and rail industries, where errors made have led to accidents.