Celebrating 80 years of NEBDN

In 1936 Philip Eswyth Grundy (LDS), a Lancashire dental practitioner set his sights on creating a qualification for the professional group now known as dental nurses today. He had heard of a similar path in America and wanted to introduce this here. It appears he consulted widely for four years with bodies such as the British Dental Association (BDA), The Incorporated Dental Society (IDS), the Public Dental Service Association (PDSA), and the Government’s Interdepartmental Committee on Dentistry (ICD).

Along with the support of the dean of Birmingham Dental School (Col CH Howkins), he founded the British Dental Nurses & Assistants Examining Board in 1943, following the formation of the British Dental Nurses and Assistants Society of Great Britain and Ireland (BDNAS) in 1940. The examining board was separate from the society but shared the same premises, which is suspected as one of the reasons for the misleading belief that the examining board was part of the association for many years.