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Staff Profile

Dr Rebecca Wassall

Senior Clinical Lecturer / Honorary Consultant in Special Care Dentistry

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7862
  • Address: Floor 5
    School of Dental Sciences
    Newcastle University
    Framlington Place
    Newcastle Upon Tyne
    NE2 4BW
Background

I am a practising Consultant in Special Care Dentistry. Qualified in 2000, I have worked across the NHS in hospital, GP and community NHS dentistry and in 2011, I completed a PhD. In 2016 I was awarded an NIHR post-doctoral fellowship and in 2019 I completed my clinical training in Special Care Dentistry.


Currently, as Senior Clinical Lecturer / Honorary Consultant in Special Care Dentistry, I provide clinical dentistry for adults with complex health and care needs, I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and I undertake research into the organisation and delivery of dental services for older dependent people. My work seeks to celebrate and promote the humanistic aspects of dental care while also embracing the opportunities of technology to improve oral health and wellbeing.


I am the Director for Student Support and Progress in the School of Dental Sciences, leading a team of Personal and Senior Tutors to support students to maximise their clinical and academic potential and gain the most from their time at Newcastle Dental School.


I lead a range of co-design research projects to deliver interventions focussed on improving dental care for older people with complex health and care needs. Driven by my frustrations with proprietary software available in NHS community dentistry I organised NHS Hack Day in Newcastle and then led 'Odonto', an innovation project that co-designed, developed and implemented software as part of the wider Great North Care Record project. Odonto is used daily in an NHS community dentistry to effectively record clinical and financial data and then ensure robust integration of this data with the national software used by NHS Business Service Authority. This work is published under a creative commons licence here on GitHub and Figshare


I can also be found on

Twitter

Google Scholar

Scopus

Linkedin


Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Dental Surgery (Newcastle, 2000)
  • Member of Faculty of Dental Surgery (Edinburgh, 2004)
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Conscious Sedation (Newcastle, 2004)
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (Newcastle, 2008)
  • Fellow of Higher Education Academy (2008)
  • PhD (Newcastle, 2011)
  • Membership in Special Care Dentistry (Edinburgh, 2019)


Memberships

  • Committee member - British Society of British Society of Gerodontology           
  • British Society of Disability and Oral Health
  • Faculty of Dental Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh)
  • Higher Education Academy
  • International Association of Dental Research
Research

My doctoral research played a pivotal role in a large interdisciplinary project working with local & regional collaborators in which I led a trial to investigate the clinical and cytokine response following periodontal intervention in patients with diabetes.


More recently, driven by my clinical work within community-based NHS dentistry the focus of my research has changed. I am now particularly concerned with addressing the challenges of improving the dental care for older people with complex health and care needs.


I have established and developed research collaboration within the Institute for health and Society and the Institute for Ageing. I am an active member of the Oral Healthcare and Epidemiology group within the School of Dental Sciences.


Research Supervision

Previous supervisor of three MSc, two MRes and two PhD students (all successfully completed).

I am currently supervising one PhD student and one MRes student.


I am keen to hear from prospective doctoral students in my areas of interest.

 

Teaching

I have built up a strong teaching background within the School of Dental Sciences where I have been involved both in the clinical and administrative side of teaching. Within the school I am involved in teaching and learning activities for both the Dental Surgery BDS Honours programme and the Oral and Dental Health Sciences BSc Honours programme.


As Director for Student Progress and Support within the Dental School, I provide senior tutor input across both undergraduate courses and the postgraduate taught courses within the school.


More broadly I am involved in dental core training and I also deliver postgraduate courses to dentists and other dental care professionals through the Health Education North East Continued Professional development programme for dentistry. 


I believe that excellent clinical teaching skills should be underpinned by sound theoretical knowledge and I have undertaken the Newcastle Certificate in Academic Practice and gained accreditation as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Publications