It is with honor and gratitude that I am the President of the CAOMS for the next year. The same sentiment goes to being a dentist, physician, and specialist in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. As with anyone reading this, you have made sacrifices and have worked hard to achieve your professional designation as a care provider/business owner. Wherever you end up is determined by many factors with the most common being where you grew up which is frequently where your family is. Continue doing great work in our great profession!
The CAOMS has worked hard over the past several years with its executive and committees to increase public awareness of what we do in our practices, in the community and promoting the profession. This has been done through our new website and social media platform using the support and expertise of a marketing firm along with our advertising/marketing committee. You know you are on the right path when you see plastic surgery using some of the identical advertisements to promote their profession. I congratulate the CAOMS in their efforts.
A few years ago, the ADA gave recognition to dental anesthesiology as a dental specialty which we can surmise will be something the Canadian Dental Anesthesiologists will want. The concentration of dental anesthesiology in Canada is almost exclusively in the greater Toronto area. We will need dental anesthesia support due to our ageing population, medically compromised population and expected future decrease in professional work force. OMFS will continue to provide its current anesthesia provider model for its patients. OMFS are very proud of the efforts of all our predecessors in anesthesia who have allowed this privilege to provide anxiolytic care for our surgical patients. We are BLS, ACLS, PALS trained along with taking advanced difficult airway courses, and working with medical anesthesiologists in many cases. This is in order to provide the best, safest care for our patients.
Whether we are discussing specialists in dentistry or general dentistry, the future is bright for the profession, especially when it comes to patient care. This will become apparent as we will be retiring dentists, increasing our ageing population and if we do not increase the number of dentists/dentist specialists we will find ourselves in a conundrum. The USA has built several new dental schools and plans on more going forward to try and address this upcoming foreseen demand on the profession. It will be interesting to see how AI and other technologies play roles in molding the future of our profession.
This June, Canada is the host country for ICOMS (International Conference on Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery) in Vancouver June 8-11, 2023. The efforts of many to make this happen, especially the scientific committee leader Dr. Ben Davis, and our ICOMS ambassador Dr. Ed Dore who have put in countless hours to bring forth an excellent program for the world of OMFS to enjoy. It is another opportunity for us to showcase Canada, Canadian OMFS research, and a chance to reconnect after a few challenging years with Covid restrictions. There will be well over 1000 OMFS from around the world including over 125 from Canada. If past meetings are any indication, this is bound to be an excellent meeting.
Next June, the CAOMS will be hosting their annual meeting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This will be the first time our national meeting will be held in Saskatchewan. The theme will be “Building Bridges”. Our medical and dental specialties are more intertwined than we want to admit at times, and with this meeting, emphasis will be how we can work together to ensure best care for our patients. The CAOMS scientific committee has put together speakers and content for this meeting of such high caliber you will not want to miss it! The dates will be June 17-19, 2023 with a 1-day pre-conference difficult airway course and a 4-day post-conference Fish and Learn fly-in-fishing trip!
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About the Author
Robert Wagner earned his undergrad and DMD in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, followed by his OMFS certificate and MD in Detroit. He relocated to South Florida as an educator and clinician at Nova Southeastern University, then to Kaiser Permanente in Oakland California in hospital practice. He returned with his family to Regina, Saskatchewen which was an underserviced area providing private and hospital OMFS care. He has been involved with CAOMS since 2010 as prairie representative until he joined the CAOMS executive a few years ago.
