The Italian diet may be rich in pasta, but the humble potato is the staple of the Scottish diet and therefore a key part of my life. I am sure potatoes will also be a key dietary component for many members and fellows.
Interestingly, India, China and Ukraine are the global potato superpowers whilst the UK is way down at 16th place in the annual potato crop league table. As a young child, I was intrigued by the annual family ritual of planting tiny seed potatoes in compost-rich earth and within a few short months, the black gold would reveal its wonderful bounty of variously sized and much treasured home-grown potatoes. There was always a mixture of the prized large potatoes and some ‘tiddlers’. The area around Dundee where I work is rich farming country for soft fruit and root vegetables, particularly potatoes, or as they are known in Scotland ‘tatties’. Having worked in the city and having lived in the nearby countryside for over 25 years, I have been indoctrinated in the importance of the longer ‘tattie’ holidays in October each year celebrating the annual harvest. Whilst my local village vegetable show like many others celebrates the ginormous vegetables, sadly the small potatoes never win a rosette.
So why are you reading a blog about small potatoes? Well, I have been planning to write on this subject for some time but the ‘big potatoes’ have kept me preoccupied. The world of dentistry is ever evolving and as an academic clinician, I can’t help being continually distracted with new techniques, gadgets, technologies and research opportunities. So, it is finally time for the small potatoes to make it to the blog. The saying ‘small potatoes’ though has, unfortunately become associated with items of low value and is used frequently in relation to items of unimportance or trivial worth. This is a pity, and I will explain why later in this article. Having frequently overlooked the small potatoes throughout life, this is my time to atone. This blog is my contribution to set the record straighter than the farmers’ furrows.
Big potatoes in a developing career are of course crucial landmarks. For dentists, graduating from university with an undergraduate degree is a key career point, often followed by either (or both) a university masters or a doctorate degree and other way points and markers of success. You would be surprised and disappointed if I did not mention the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Membership and Fellowship exams, along with the new Diploma examinations and Dental Care Professional (DCP) examinations for our valued DCP colleagues. These are massively important milestones in all each of our careers and the certificates rightly adorn our walls with pride. However, the big potatoes can overshadow everything else.
Whilst we celebrate the big potato achievements of passing the College examinations, particularly at one of our wonderful Diploma Ceremonies, we should recognise that a career is built on the smaller components as well. The formative is as important as the summative and the former contribute to the latter. The formative aspects are less obvious in the career journey, and it is a pity that these are often overlooked. Everyone can recall examination processes, particularly vivas but can you recall the individual building blocks of learning and development that got you to the point of sitting your examinations and helped your career flourish in the longer term?
Courses and resources are part of life in dentistry as we continually update, and from time to time upskill. Even though many dental regulatory bodies around the world have annual continuing professional development requirements for ongoing registration, these are fundamentally numerical rather than truly promoting introspectiveness and rarely engender more than superficial box ticking.
Every patient appointment, interaction with a colleague, not forgetting attending courses, conferences, as well as reading the literature, is nonetheless an opportunity for formative professional development. Even the incidental interactions with the ‘behind the scenes’ people in our teams shape who we are and without this small army working quietly in the background, clinical services would not run. Equally importantly, small and gentle acts of kindness as our careers develop are key to both good clinical care and developing positive professional relationships. Creating a culture of respect and gratitude to value these ‘small potato’ contributions is important in developing a happy and successful team.
Formative learning requires active involvement and reflection. I can binge-watch TV and movies at an Olympic standard but invariably fail to remember much of the detail. I sometimes wonder if this is the case with some of the formative learning I undertake too. Despite trying to convince my parents as a child, I never really could study for a school exam whilst the TV was on. Trying to complete a CPD module with background distractions does not lead to being a better clinician. The same goes for social media ‘learning’. Doomscrolling on a device screen delivers a dopamine loop where the anticipation of new information makes it difficult to disengage. However, wonderful clinical results published on the social media channels are not opportunities for development. These are simply personal promotion and invariably, I skip by since even micro-learning needs some mental effort. Attending and reflecting should therefore go hand in hand, even for the smaller learning opportunities.
However, strangely the seemingly insignificant and incidental details are frequently the nuggets of information that we remember. These go unnoticed at the time, but the subconscious mind seems to take note and can process this information quietly. Why is it that we remember the meaningless but can’t remember the meaningful? Furthermore, we all focus on things that don’t work out as planned and the human mind has a tendency to recall the negative more than the positive. These relatively minor and seemingly incidental events only contribute to our character and identity, and not to our professional expertise.
The formative small potatoes of learning should be an active process. And whilst professional development is a mixture of activities throughout a career involving active and passive formative events, the small potatoes of CPD learning are key. If something is important, it deserves our full attention. The College provides a one-stop-shop wealth of resources to help with your professional development. Most of these require active participation and cognitive engagement. Have you explored the range of learning opportunities through the College website and app, particularly ProDental CPD ProDental CPD: a Closer Look at the New Dental Membership Benefit | RCSEd? I am sure you appreciate one of my key points in this blog, that passive participation does not lead to intellectual productivity. Education and engagement should be valued in all of our careers and what a privilege it is for all healthcare professionals for the small potatoes of learning to be able to grow into the big potatoes of the career milestones. This is something all of us within RCSEd should celebrate. Therefore, engagement in the resources the College provides for career development is not only valuable, but there is a unique opportunity to explore the wider professional material available to all members of the College.
In conclusion, the small potatoes are crucially important, and we should all celebrate these small, but mighty wins. I am hoping that the small potatoes I planted this year will yield a decent harvest and whilst the role of Dean precludes large-scale gardening, I will celebrate the small as well as the big potatoes this year.
As ever, feel free to get in contact about any issue, even about your small potatoes dental@rcsed.ac.uk.