Transcript

Nairn Wilson:
So off I go, grumbling and groaning with a very unhappy wife and unhappy parents and child and all the rest, you can imagine. Bit of domestic tension. Off I go, do the business, get back to the airport, and the lady at the check-in counter looks at me and said “Well, Dr. Wilson,” they said, “we’re going to get you home fast because the company said you’re on Concord tonight.”

Intro Voice:
This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Payman L:
So today we’ve got Professor Nairn Wilson on the show. Thanks so much, Professor, for coming-

Nairn Wilson:
It’s a pleasure.

Payman L:
-to the studio. You’ve had a wonderful career, long and interesting career, the top of the profession, both in academia and teaching, all different things you’ve done. But I’d like to start with the backstory. Where were you born, what kind of childhood did you have?

Nairn Wilson:
I was born in a place called Kilmarnock in Scotland, 20 miles south of Glasgow. Father was a single-handed dental practitioner in the town, town of 40,000 people, four dentists, high levels of dental disease. So he did huge numbers of extractions, and when he came out of World War II, he brought with him two dental mechanics. So we had two dental mechanics-

Payman L:
On site?

Nairn Wilson:
On site, in the practise. He did three G.A. sessions a week with a consultant anaesthetist.

Payman L:
Whoa.

Nairn Wilson:
What could’ve called in the olden days a blood and vulcanite practise. So at any one time, he would’ve walked into, it wasn’t a laboratory, it was a workshop, there would be 20-30 sets of complete dentures being processed at some stage at any one time. So I started my first exposure to dentistry was as a young boy earning pocket money doing things like picking wax out of composition impression material-

Payman L:
You were really in it from the very beginning.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah.

Payman L:
Was it a foregone conclusion that you were going to study dentistry-

Nairn Wilson:
Nope.

Payman L:
Do you remember the time when you decided to do that?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, initially I thought it was going to be medicine. It was fashionable at the time to push through the educational system, so I got the exams necessary to get into university when I was 17, and I’d been pushed all the way and it was thought to be a very good … he’s done well, he’s getting GCS at 15, and Scotland hires around A-levels, at 17. So initially, I went for an interview for medicine at Glasgow University at 17 and a bit.

Prav Solanki:
Wow.

Nairn Wilson:
And they said “fine, come back next year.” And I thought “why, when you’ve been pushed through the education system?” There weren’t things like gap years then, and I wasn’t 18 and so on, so I did an extra year at school.

Prav Solanki:
Just mucking about, or … ?

Nairn Wilson:
No, no, well, I had to do something.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah.

Nairn Wilson:
And as a part of a challenge, somewhat, I suppose, in hindsight, naughtily, I entered myself for Oxford and Cambridge to do marine biology, because I was very much into biology, zoology, botany, et cetera. As I was quite relaxed about this, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, and I went to the interviews and so at Cambridge and I got in.

Prav Solanki:
Amazing.

Nairn Wilson:
But they were, it’s not what I wanted to do, and I’d just done it, really-

Payman L:
As a joke?

Nairn Wilson:
Well …

Payman L:
As a challenge.

Nairn Wilson:
As a challenge, yes. And the school I was at mortified, because not many people get into Oxford and Cambridge from up in Scotland.

Payman L:
Did you not consider it? I mean, did you not get seduced by the-

Nairn Wilson:
The atmosphere? No. It was around that time that people, my parents were a bit confused about what I was going to do, and I had to sort of take myself off and sort myself out. Came to the conclusion that It was going to be dentistry rather than medicine. So off I went to Edinburgh for an interview, got in there, and here we are 50 years later.

Payman L:
Were you top of your class in dental school?

Nairn Wilson:
Pretty much, won a few prizes. Never perfect, a theme that goes through my life. I like to … a discipline to reflect at the end of every day and just, there’s always, you could’ve done it better. Not bad, but could do things better. One of my thinking is, better than yesterday, but it’s going to be even better tomorrow. A lot of reflection, I think, is something that’s very good for a professional person to do.

Nairn Wilson:
It’s never perfect, and indeed, when I started training as a senior registrar, or registrar in restorative dentistry, my supervising consultant said to me “Go and do me a perfect bridge,” because we didn’t do implants at the time. “Do me a perfect bridge.” On the sixth one, I showed it to him, and like anything, if you look close enough, nothing’s perfect. The realisation, there’s always room for improvement, whatever you do, and I think it’s a good discipline, just at the end of the day, to reflect and say “not bad, but could do that a little better, how do I make it better? How can I get that tissue reaction, you know, really spot-on rather than a little bit inflamed or the contour right, et cetera?”

Nairn Wilson:
I apply that to many things I do in my life. And I think reflection, you know, constantly learning, and I often said to students, and I still say, if I talk to them, “it’s a bad day, even now, that I don’t learn something new about dentistry or see it in a different light from what I’ve done, or the penny suddenly drops and think, gosh, I’ve never really understood that or appreciated the subtly of something.”

Prav Solanki:
Just stepping back in time, earning your pocket money in your father’s practise, I remember earning my pocket money in my father’s corner shop by getting five-pound bags of spuds and delivering papers and stuff like that. But I never actually got paid any pocket money, it was just part and parcel of being the son of a shopkeeper.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
I put some serious hours in there, after school, before school, weekends. What was that like, growing up in that, how often were you in the practise, what were you doing, and how much did you learn hands-on at that time?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, quite a lot. I was typically in the practise two or three times a week. If I stayed on at school to play football or something, easy to go to my dad’s surgery and wait for him to finish and then get a lift home in the car. Or he, as many folks did, he worked Saturday mornings, and sometimes I’d go in with him on a Saturday morning and he would give me jobs to do. Or the mechanics would find something for me to do.

Nairn Wilson:
So I was typically in the practise two or three times a week, and got to know the mechanics and the workshop. Yeah, there was always things to be done, bits and pieces. But it’s, for a bit fun, I think I had a go at my first setup when I was about 12 or 13, yeah. Learned to do bits and pieces.

Payman L:
At least tell us that the dean of a dental school and the president of the GDC used to get drunk and do stupid things at university.

Nairn Wilson:
Of course I-

Payman L:
Thank God for that.

Nairn Wilson:
I had a great student life. Went to Edinburgh because didn’t want to live at home as a student and close to Glasgow. A lot of my friends went to Edinburgh, so I went to Edinburgh. A great place to be a student.

Payman L:
Great place, great city.

Nairn Wilson:
I had a fantastic student existence, maybe not look at now, but when I was younger I played a lot of sports, played rugby at a good quality standard. Played field hockey in the days you played on grass, not fancy artificial pitches where the ball bounced a lot around. And also played a lot of squash, played for a Scottish schoolboys for squash, played for the Scottish universities, for Scottish cap, for southwest Scotland for hockey.

Payman L:
I’m not hearing much about the drunken, stupid things.

Nairn Wilson:
Well, if you play a lot of rugby …

Payman L:
Yeah, yeah. Goes with it.

Nairn Wilson:
Goes with it. So no, I had a very, what I’d say, healthy and appropriate student life, good work-life balance. Worked hard, played hard.

Payman L:
And you were saying your dad was expecting you to come back and work with him.

Nairn Wilson:
When I got to fourth, fifth year, it dawned on him, because he was then 59 or something, wouldn’t this be a golden ticket if son came back, took the practise over, and gave opportunity … he could come in, tinker around, see his old patients, et cetera. And watching him work, and the nature of the practise, over time, he didn’t do quite so many extractions, so many complete dentures, but it was still a dominant feature, because the oral health in that part of the world was bad, and indeed, is not that good these days.

Nairn Wilson:
I thought, I cannot do this. I think it’s relevant to this day, I still take my hat off to GPs that go in the one room every day for six, seven, whatever hours. To me, it begins to feel a bit like a prison cell, in a way. You’re locked in that room and doing the same thing. I love clinical dentistry, or I loved it when I did it. But doing it and nothing else, day in, day out, in the one place scared me a little bit, I think.

Payman L:
I can understand that.

Nairn Wilson:
One of the most difficult conversations I had in my life was saying to my father, “Dad, I’m not going to do this.”

Prav Solanki:
Tell us a bit more about, just … I think about difficult conversations, was asking my father-in-law for my wife’s hand in marriage, right?

Nairn Wilson:
That was a difficult one too, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Terrified. Just talk us through that conversation, the build-up to it-

Payman L:
Was he disappointed?

Prav Solanki:
Did you have the conversation with yourself a few times?

Nairn Wilson:
I think I’d made my mind up several weeks before it came up, but he increasingly was sharing with friends and colleagues, “oh, it’s great, Nairn’s going to graduate in a year’s time and, you know, I’m going to be semi-retired and he’s going to take the practise over and it’s all going to be very different.” I just, I had to, when I was back home from university, I said “hey, Dad, we got to sit down and talk,” you know.

Nairn Wilson:
Early one evening, charged his glass and my glass, we sat down and I said, just had to come out front with it, saying “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” He was saddened, I think, and a bit upset with me because it was a good-going practise, it was a meal ticket for life, almost, you know? It wasn’t a bad place to live, I could have a good, steady income, et cetera, et cetera.

Nairn Wilson:
He said, “what are you going to do?”, and he was even more upset when I said “I really don’t know.”

Payman L:
“Not this.”

Nairn Wilson:
Not this. I suppose that didn’t sit very well very comfortably, that I didn’t say, you know, something …

Payman L:
Did you have ambitions of seeing the big, wide world, that sort of thing? Like, leaving home? Was that part of it?

Nairn Wilson:
Nope. In fact, when I graduated, I was delighted, obviously, to graduate, but at the same time, I thought, gosh, what am I going to do? Because I don’t want to go into practise like Dad or whatever. What are the options? And there weren’t so many options back then in the 1970s, early 1970s. So went for one of the old-style house jobs, stayed in Edinburgh, hoping that it would be clear if I hung around, did one of these house jobs, that some future would start, I would see doors I might want to go and open and have a look in and see what was there.

Payman L:
Probably a good idea.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. Well, it’s fortunate it worked for me, because during the course of the year, opportunity came my way and somebody in the dental hospital in Edinburgh, bit of a midlife crisis or something happened, I don’t know precisely, and the dean came to me and said “this person’s gone off for six months, would you like to be a temporary demonstrator, role of the house officer?” Oh, interesting, a bit of teaching, and won’t be seeing patients day in, day out, I get a bit of variety of stuff that I do. That appealed to me. And I get a handsome increase in salary from 850 pounds a year to 1,500, and bought a new car and I spent a bit.

Prav Solanki:
What was the car?

Nairn Wilson:
A brand-new Mini. Terracotta orange.

Prav Solanki:
Terracotta …

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, pride and joy.

Payman L:
What about your peers? Most of them were in practise at this point.

Nairn Wilson:
Yep.

Payman L:
How much were they earning?

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, quite a lot, because people in Scotland, given the disease, if you could keep working and put the hours in, you could earn a whole lot of money-

Payman L:
Yeah, so Prof, what was it about you that made you think, I’m not going to go for the cash, I’m going to go for the interest? Have you always been that person?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, I don’t know when I learned it, but it’s certainly something that, even then, and has stayed with me, money doesn’t necessarily buy you happiness.

Payman L:
That’s for sure.

Prav Solanki:
For sure.

Nairn Wilson:
It’s not everything in life. It’s nice to have money, and not to be short of it and be able to pay for the mortgage and so on, but it’s also good to, you know, feel you’re happy, and professional fulfilment in what you do and that you’re content. So again, the work-life balance philosophy and yes, of not, I suppose, a fear of ending up doing a lot of repetitive things. I like challenges, I like doing new things, different things. Again, as we talked about, my dad, a little bit of a fear of ending up being “here, just do this.” I wouldn’t want to be into automatic pilot, doing-

Payman L:
It shows an ambition of a young age.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, because Dad’s practise would’ve brought wealth.

Nairn Wilson:
A very comfortable middle-class existence, it was never wealthy.

Prav Solanki:
No, but at that stage-

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, it was a very comfortable existence, there’d be no problem, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
But you chose a different route.

Nairn Wilson:
And some uncertainty, and to a certain extent, yes, I thrive a little bit on some uncertainty.

Payman L:
Well, you must do, you must do to do all the things that you’ve done, to jump between the things you’ve jumped between.

Nairn Wilson:
Yep.

Payman L:
You must be comfortable in, I mean, I’m not going to call you an adrenaline junkie in that sense, but nonetheless, most people are very scared of change. What is it about you that means that you’re not?

Nairn Wilson:
I don’t know what it’s about me specifically, but I’m honest enough, as I do reflect about myself-

Payman L:
Do you keep a diary?

Nairn Wilson:
Nope. It’s all up here in the brain.

Prav Solanki:
Do you have a time of day that you do it, or a place you go to or-

Nairn Wilson:
No, no, just the usual evening time, just sit down, quiet, usually watch a bit of telly or read a book or just sit, look out the window for 15 minutes, just reflect on the day and think about tomorrow.

Payman L:
So how did the academic career go after that? You got the demonstrator job-

Nairn Wilson:
Yep.

Payman L:
Did you climb up the …

Nairn Wilson:
The guy who went off on the time-out, whatever it was, his problem, he didn’t come back, so I became a permanent demonstrator.

Prav Solanki:
What does a demonstrator do?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, it was a bit like a visiting practitioner, supervise clinics and did the odd tutorial.

Prav Solanki:
Uh-huh. Teaching undergrads.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, looking after undergraduates, and also some teaching of things, like dental nurses. Weren’t enough hygienists and therapists at the time, did a little bit of training, dental technologists-

Payman L:
Any research side, or-

Nairn Wilson:
Yep, because when I was in that that job, I did a project that, to this day, I’m really proud of, it was a great project. When I was house officer, one of the things I had to do, we were very close to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and they used to phone up the dental hospital and say “we got a patient in ward 10 in whatever with a problem, can somebody come over and fix him out?”

Nairn Wilson:
So I was in and out this hospital a bit, and look at all these patients, a lot of trouble, as is often the case with people who have been in hospital for a while, nurses who, through ignorance, never thought brushing their teeth. Horror stories in wards full of very old people, all the dentures getting cleaned in one big bowl and just grab for the best-fitting dentures, you know.

Nairn Wilson:
Yes, so I took it upon myself, in one weekend, I went and I did an oral examination of every patient in the hospital, just a snapshot, and including the people who come in in Casualty and so on. So I worked the 72 hours straight, you know-

Prav Solanki:
Just off your own back?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, it was well-planned. I had to design a sort of questionnaire thing, and I picked up several oral cancers.

Prav Solanki:
Whoa.

Nairn Wilson:
A whole lot of candida, because people are on drugs and things. Lots of people were sitting there, in pain and discomfort and saying, “well, I’ve got to wait till out of here.” And you say, “have you said anything?” And they said, “Well, no, I mean, these people can’t do anything, I need to see a dentist.” And these was just loads of pathology-

Payman L:
Interesting.

Nairn Wilson:
So I published it, and I’m not sure it’s ever been done again, but it’s a really interesting thing to do. So that was one of my first research papers, I did that. And it gave me, of course, a big buzz, the first time you get a paper published and so on.

Prav Solanki:
How old were you then?

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, I was 24, five. At dental school. Typical path, go to dental school 18, five years, 23, so I was 24. 24, 25 at the time, something of that sort.

Payman L:
And then you progressed?

Nairn Wilson:
I like to say I was headhunted to get out to Manchester. An external examiner, man called Professor Nixon, who’s a prof of conservative dentistry in Manchester. I like to think he saw me as some opportunity, and Manchester’s a place I’d never visited. Driven past it going south, and I thought I was just going for a few years, because he and Manchester have a reputation of getting people pretty quickly processed through master’s and PhD degrees, which Edinburgh wasn’t. Much more clinical.

Nairn Wilson:
So I’ll go to Manchester for a few years, come back triumphant with master’s degree, PhD, maybe get a senior job back up in Scotland.

Payman L:
Yeah, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Mm-hmm.

Nairn Wilson:
So off I go to Manchester, and bit of a shock to the system, from Edinburgh to Manchester. But it was good, and 27 years in Manchester.

Payman L:
Wow.

Nairn Wilson:
I started off junior lecturer, ended up, had been dean of the dental school, ended up pro-vice-chancellor of the university.

Payman L:
And you still live up there, right?

Nairn Wilson:
We live in Cheshire, in Alderley Edge. Yeah.

Payman L:
Climbing up the academic ladder-

Nairn Wilson:
Greasy pole, I think.

Payman L:
I don’t know anything about it, but obviously you’ve got to be good with people.

Nairn Wilson:
Well, I like to think you have to have a lot of skills.

Payman L:
Yeah.

Nairn Wilson:
I’ve always been a strong believer, up until and including the time I was dean at King’s, I believe that clinical practise, teaching and research, all have to go hand-in-hand. They all live off each other. Indeed, when I was dean at King’s, I was often quoted back in saying “I don’t think an academic can teach their way out of research or research their way out of teaching.” You’ve got to do both.

Payman L:
As far as leadership, I mean, you’ve taken so many leadership roles, what would be your, you know, Sir Alex Ferguson that teaches corporate people about leadership now? What are some of your top tips?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, got the leadership bug, or I was encouraged, talked about it, my secondment into dental industry. I had to assume a lot of leadership-

Payman L:
When did this happen? From Manchester?

Nairn Wilson:
From Manchester, when I was about 27, so two years into Manchester. The same man headhunted me, Professor Nixon, was a great golf player, and you get a phone call from ICI, out of Alderley Edge, south of Manchester, to say “I’ve had this strange phone call, these people out of ICI who are into heart drugs, but they also produce lots of paints and adhesives”-

Prav Solanki:
It was the biggest chemical company in the U.K., wasn’t it?

Nairn Wilson:
That’s right. So they just had to get some questions about dentistry, “I’m sure you can handle it, and I’m bound to give you a nice lunch or whatever.” He said, “if I didn’t have a tee-off in the golf course at 2:00, I would go myself, but off you go,” because these days, typically students didn’t work Wednesday afternoons. Gave up opportunity to research, to go to ICI, no idea what was going to happen.

Nairn Wilson:
Put into a room with four other people, chemists and so on, a marketing person introduced herself, didn’t know why we were there. And a director of ICI Pharmaceuticals came in and he said, “Gentlemen … ” No ladies, I’m afraid, it was five guys. He said “we got a fancy of adhesives and abrasives and everything, we think we could use a lot of patents and so on to develop a dental business. Would you like to do it?”

Payman L:
As unspecific as that?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah.

Payman L:
Amazing.

Prav Solanki:
Didn’t know what you were going on for.

Nairn Wilson:
Nope.

Payman L:
They didn’t even know what they were going for.

Nairn Wilson:
No, nothing specific. And a large amount of money in the bank.

Payman L:
Do you remember how much it was?

Nairn Wilson:
10 million.

Payman L:
Back then?

Nairn Wilson:
Back then.

Payman L:
Wow.

Nairn Wilson:
10 million. Big pharmaceutical company, to them, they worked-

Payman L:
Drop in the ocean.

Nairn Wilson:
-billions for hard drugs and so on. And so they thought 10 million was a very modest … if you’re going to develop a new hard drug, you’d probably put 100 million in the bank, you know, back then. So a bit of an experiment. We introduced ourselves again, and we agreed, I was the only clinician, and went back to see my professor the next day, and I said “Got a deal for you.” I said, you know, “They want to look around and see if we’ve got things that could be applied in dentistry. They’re going to give you one and a half times my salary so you can employee somebody to replace me, plus you get half a salary free.”

Payman L:
Did you negotiate that, or was that something they just said they’re going to do?

Nairn Wilson:
No, I was quick off the mark. I thought it was a very good deal. So I was seconded, and we started, the first thing was Corsodyl mouthwash, because they had Hibiscrub hand wash, and they’d been through all the toxicology and everything, so it was safe for clinical use and so on, and the chlorhexidine. So it was very quick to make Corsodyl mouthwash, and that was our first entry into the market.

Prav Solanki:
Whoa.

Nairn Wilson:
And then we looked around, and we thought a big challenge was tooth-colour filling materials, all in traditional amalgam, and gold was used still quite a bit in that time. We set that as a long-term goal, and the other thing was, well, it’s messy, mixing up two pastes and stuff, there must be a better way of doing this. We looked at all sort of patents and so on, and we found a light-curing patent, which originally was going to be for car paint. Bit of a story there.

Payman L:
Were they already using it for car paint and just had the patent?

Nairn Wilson:
They had the patent and were using it for one or two interesting things, like fibre optics, because, to make a fibre optic cable, and if you wanted to have a specific shape or get around corners and stuff, thing was, you dipped the fibres in the magic glue, the light-curing glue, and you bent it into the shape you wanted, put in the case, set it, and then you just put light through it. Boom, and it’s set in the shape you wanted it.

Payman L:
Oh, right.

Nairn Wilson:
So you could have bizarre things and shapes and so on, of light-conducting cable, that had high efficiency, that most of the light went in, came out the other end.

Payman L:
So for younger dentists, before light-curing came along, you used to mix two pastes and you had, it was like, working time-

Prav Solanki:
resin or something.

Nairn Wilson:
No, no, it’s two pastes. Two pastes, and the big problem with that was that however you mixed it, being viscous, you always incorporate lots and lots of air.

Payman L:
Yeah.

Nairn Wilson:
So if you mixed up a composite, two-paste composite, and then let it cure a section and looked at it, it was like an Aero bar inside. It was full of air bubbles, which is not good. It makes it opaque, because of the air bubbles, and it doesn’t have the same light properties. And it adversely affects the properties and of course the bubbles, they fill up with fluid and then you get all sort of other things happen, like discoloration and so on.

Nairn Wilson:
Well, it wasn’t completely novel, because I had been UV, ultraviolet, curing, a system called NUVA-Fill, which is used for fixer sealants, and they did have early forms of veneers as well, material, but it was discredited because UV light was seen to be potentially hazardous to fingers and so on, potentially carcinogenic effect. So UV light went, so the concept of a single paste and light-curing, or curing by light, was not entirely novel, but the visible light-curing was new.

Payman L:
So the first time that you saw that, I guess you had … did you think, did you understand the magnitude of the-

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, yes. Instantly. I had used the NUVA-fill stuff, so I knew it, when you were sculpting bigger composites like a class four on a fractured incisor, rather than having a celluloid crown form with a two-paste material that was rapidly setting on you, you had to shove it in place very quick, you had some time. The concept of what was then, we referred to it as “command set.”

Prav Solanki:
“Command set,” yeah.

Nairn Wilson:
It wasn’t quite that, because it was setting under the operating light until we get orange ping-pong bats and things to help slow it down. But it was a lot longer than we had with the chemically curing materials, and of course you could see the advantage.

Payman L:
And where did it go from there? You did this in the lab, how long does it take from that moment of breakthrough in a lab until it becomes a product?

Nairn Wilson:
Again, unbelievable in this day and age: from laboratory to on-the-market materials, 18 months.

Prav Solanki:
Wow.

Nairn Wilson:
And we worked night and day to get the formulation right, do early clinical trials, get it refined, initially just one colour, because we’re first in with shaded composites; that came down the line just a little bit later. But that was another, that was a first for us.

Payman L:
That was an ICI product, was it?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. On the back of the first one. The material called Opalux. So I’ll tell you how we did that, if you want. We got the time.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, yeah.

Nairn Wilson:
Anyway, back to the initial material, Fotofill. Single colour, one paste, came in pots initially, because we couldn’t get this sticky stuff into syringes, couldn’t find it until, by chance, I went on a flight over to America to go to the FDA to justify the stuff getting a licence to sell in North America. On the way back, sat down on the plane beside a man who was into syringe technology.

Payman L:
Crazy, isn’t it.

Nairn Wilson:
And was just started talking, and I said “that’s really interesting, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got this really sticky, viscous material I want to put in a syringe, rather than having a tub, because if you lift the lid off the tub, the whole tub set, yeah. It’s a real problem.” So he said, “I can do that.” Made that man a fortune, because he had the patent on syringes for composites.

Prav Solanki:
What are the chances, eh?

Nairn Wilson:
We stayed up all night on the night flight, we drank rather a lot, too. But by the time we got off the plane, we had all sorts of bits of paper with, you know, he said “this is how you do it, you need this sort of taper and a screw thing on it.”

Prav Solanki:
Amazing.

Payman L:
What about personally, for you? Was there some royalty in it for you?

Nairn Wilson:
Nope. Thankfully, I stayed seconded, I didn’t, I was asked if I want to make, go in and work for ICI as time went by. I resisted that, and

Nairn Wilson:
thankfully I did. The way the story ended, because almost seven years to date we had done the light curing, we went on to do more sophisticated composites out of a material called Opalux, which is the first shady composite, four shades. And that was done, I did a study, I went one of my practise-based studies, I get whole other dentists to collect the body shade for, then porcelain jacket crowns. And I collected the shades and praxis for 10,000 crowns and I quickly found out that 90% of crowns were on four shades. A two, a three and a half. You probably know.

Payman L:
The ones we know.

Nairn Wilson:
The ones you know, and that was four shades of the composite because 90% of crowns were these four shades.

Payman L:
Composite was purely for anterior at that point?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, we started and we moved on a classic material called occlusion for use on posterior teeth and to a lot of grief about that because the initial attempts of using composites on posterior teeth were disastrous.

Payman L:
Yeah, I bet.

Nairn Wilson:
Because it was an old style two paste material called Adaptic that was tried and it wore very quickly and it leaked because we didn’t have, you barely had enamel bonding. We certainly didn’t have any adhesive bonding at that time because the first, like your composites, we placed no bonding at all.

Payman L:
No bonding at all?

Nairn Wilson:
No, I didn’t know about it yet. Acid etching was just for efficiency. It’s not for you.

Payman L:
Oh, really?

Nairn Wilson:
We introduced that as well.

Payman L:
Oh really?

Nairn Wilson:
Opalux has had acid etch with it, but not the original photo fill, but we get into occlusion and other materials are still here and today. Lovely story about the braces strip Epictechs, that was an ICI abrasive paper.

Payman L:
What were they using it for?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, I saw at one lunch break, I was walking around, beautiful summer’s day out at Macclesfield where they had the production facility and I walked past and that that was a time car bodies rusted a lot and one of the things you had to do was fill it and you filled holes in your car body, you’re usually the wings up at the top of the wheel arches, you’re rusty through. And there’s this technician finishing off sanding down a patch he had put in the wing of his car and it looked beautiful, great finish. I said, “What’s that material you’re using?” And he said, “This is this stuff at the skip at the back.” He says, “Great for this.” Great finish to the fibreglass, they filler he used. Round to the skip at the bank and here it is and took it back to the office and put it through a shredder. And all we had to do is make it waterproof. That was Fabutex.

Payman L:
That’s it? Amazing.

Nairn Wilson:
That was Fabutex. It’s a fantastic technology and it’s still the same stuff today.

Payman L:
I love that.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, it’s lovely. Did that and We bought a company in the States, we bought Co because, as things still are today, it’s difficult to sell products in North America that aren’t made in North America, to import stuff. And they’re not impressed by made in the UK, regrettably. Well, they haven’t got that message. We bought this, what was very much a family business and a very well known name in dentistry in North America and elsewhere in the world. Things like Copack for Perio Surgery and stuff. We bought Co and we shipped the material out there, made in the UK and we put labels on the syringes and we sold it North America.

Payman L:
Just to make it look American.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. As many people did with UK products. Bought a company within all that.

Payman L:
Prof, this all sounds so exciting. Why were you not seduced by it to the extent that you actually decided to go into…

Prav Solanki:
Industry.

Payman L:
Industry instead of… Because you loved clinical so much?

Nairn Wilson:
I love clinical. I loved my teaching. I like doing research and a lot of research I couldn’t publish because it was commercially sensitive and that frustrated me and it came to an end that we had spent a lot of time in Japan. A lot of our materials were picked up and used and did the Opalux material. I said it was difficult to supply the Japanese market, was so successful with the factory working seven days a week just to satisfy the Japanese market and there was frustration in Europe that we couldn’t produce enough to sell it elsewhere.

Payman L:
That’s a good problem to have.

Nairn Wilson:
Isn’t that a nice problem? I spent a lot of time and it was through GC and GC offered parent company ICI a price they couldn’t refuse. And as I said, almost seven years today, same five people in the room asked down to London with their spouses, partners and a guy came in and he said, “We’ve looked at you with amazement. You put the money in bank.” The last year we made a clear 5 million profit. We’d paid for Co and paid everything up and they said, “We’re selling out to these Japanese people. You have a great night.”

Prav Solanki:
That was it?

Nairn Wilson:
Last day we put the light off. Yeah. That was it. Thankfully I could go back to the university and pick up my academic life again.

Prav Solanki:
Just putting all this into context while she was the ICI, where did everything else fit in, wife, kids, family? Had that come along at that time?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
What was the dynamic, the balance, the work life?

Nairn Wilson:
Very difficult and part of the reason I didn’t go into this stream because you were very much owned by the company and I think it’s summed up one story, a child’s fifth birthday or something. Organised my parents to come down from Scotland for the birthday party, et cetera. They’re coming in Friday, the birthday party is on Saturday sort of thing.

Prav Solanki:
Everyone’s excited.

Nairn Wilson:
Everyone’s excited. Phone call on Wednesday night, “You’re going to America tomorrow.” There’s a meeting at the FDA or something, another licence this year or something. And very often the trips were there and back just to go for a meeting or whatever. Yeah. I said, “No, I’m not. Family coming down. Birthday party. All organised.” A little pause at the end of the phone and they said, “No, you are on the plane tomorrow at 10 o’clock.” They weren’t heartless because the story ends well. Off I go grumbling and groaning with a very unhappy wife and unhappy parents and child and all the rest. You can imagine. Bit of domestic tension. Off I go, do the business, get back to the airport and the lady at the check in counter looks at me and said, “Well Dr. Wilson,” he said, “We’re going to get home fast because the company had said you’re on Concord tonight.”

Nairn Wilson:
I made a home for the birthday party. It wasn’t all heartless, but you…

Payman L:
You didn’t appreciate being owned by them.

Nairn Wilson:
When they said jump, it was, “How high?”

Prav Solanki:
How high?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Typically, what sort of hours were you doing? How much home time, weekend time, that sort of, just paint us a picture of that.

Nairn Wilson:
A lot of work. Because it was really exciting and it was busy in buzzy and a lot of travel and so on. Wife who had her own career, she was on the way to be, did PhD clinical training. She ended up consulting restorative dentistry in Manchester, so she had her own career and she largely brought up the kids. She was the linchpin at home and driving her career as well. A lot of pressure on her. Yeah. It was difficult, but a lot of working, wee small hours and all sorts of things.

Payman L:
When something suddenly takes off though, that’s the way it is. I mean, it doesn’t matter what you do.

Nairn Wilson:
And there it was at such pace and it was so exciting. As I said, the first probably 18 months from-

Prav Solanki:
That’s amazing.

Payman L:
Did you bring in more dentists, more clinical people?

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, yes. People like professor Trevor Burke. He was a practitioner in Manchester. Trevor did a lot of initial handling and testing and did clinic cases for us for brochures and stuff. People like Trevor were, yes, a lot of people willing to-

Payman L:
Yeah, it was growing? Everything was growing, right?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very quick. Yeah.

Payman L:
Then when you got back to academia, did you go straight from industry to senior academic or…

Nairn Wilson:
Pretty much. By then, I was a senior lecture consultant because I’d got that when I was doing this stuff at, did all that, finished my training and so on. And I rather cheekily applied for a chair at Conserve the Dentistry in Bristol. I was delighted to get an interview and I thought, “Great.” I mean, that just to put in my CV that I’d been invited for an interview for a chair I thought was an achievement. Yeah. I went down there and they had had somebody in mind a long time and the Dean at the time was Crispin Scully who came to Eastman. He was the Dean and I started the interview and I said, “I don’t want the job you’ve advertised. I’m a restorative dentist,” because there were just cones they were advertising for and their professor of prostetic dentistry was retiring next year and they had nobody in dental materials and I said, “I want to come and be your professor of restorative dentistry, including dental materials.” And when this professor retires next year we’ll hire maybe at material scientists or something different. Yeah?

Nairn Wilson:
But I wanted to do whole of restorative dentistry. The interview went a long time. Didn’t quite make it. I think they kept interviewing me until I blew it somewhere along the line, as I was whole young and inexperienced, but on the back of that, I went back to Manchester. The person who had headhunted me, he had taken early retirement and the chair had been sat vacant for a while and the message get back to Manchester that I had done fairly well this interview, although, and they decided they would open up the chair and Manchester again and I was given that and I was 36.

Payman L:
Wow.

Prav Solanki:
Amazing.

Payman L:
What did your peers think about that?

Nairn Wilson:
Disbelief from a lot of people.

Payman L:
It’s a bit young, isn’t it?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Some young people were very encouraged thinking that there was hope after all that-

Prav Solanki:
Inspiration.

Nairn Wilson:
If you work at it and you do the right things, you can get recognised. It happens. It’s not dead men’s shoes forever and a day or waiting and waiting and Buggins turn and stuff. But the first five years as a professor is very difficult. Every time I stood up to speak at conferences and things, “We’ll put this young man back in his box,” and yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Much heckling?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah?

Nairn Wilson:
Fair bit of, but just weather the storm.

Prav Solanki:
I think anytime your progress in any field is exponential, people are going to say something, aren’t they? The way life works out.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, yeah.

Payman L:
Prof, do you feel like when you see someone who’s going up that ladder now, can you spot the ones who are going to make it to the top?

Nairn Wilson:
Yep. And it’s a hell of a thing to do because all the clinical training, PhDs, publishing papers, getting grants, supervising students-

Payman L:
It’s years and years and years of dedication.

Nairn Wilson:
I’m honest enough to admit it’s probably tougher than when it happened to me. Physically, I don’t think he could jump through all the hoops and be ready in time. The number of hoops that there now are. It was probably easier for me, there were fewer hoops to jump through just to be eligible and to get where I got to, but it’s a big commitment. Why subject yourself to all this when there’s an increasing opportunity, if you’re good clinically, growth in non-NHS, private dentistry, if you’re really good and you know your stuff. It’s very tempting. Why should I subject myself to, because you live by publications and, “Where’s my next grant coming from and where’s my next PhD students?” And universities are pretty tough about it. Yeah.

Payman L:
What about at the undergrad level? Can you spot a undergrad who is going to go far?

Nairn Wilson:
Yep. Always used to say, you’ve going to class full of people, the first time they see phantom heads and clinical simulation areas and so on, you wander around. You can pick out five or 10 students in a year of 100 or 150 that are going to be a bit more trouble than the others. Yeah. Are going to be some TLC along the way. Yeah.

Payman L:
And the talented ones too?

Nairn Wilson:
Yes, you pick them out fairly quickly.

Payman L:
How much of dentistry do you think is talent based and how much is hard work-based or is that a silly question?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, I always say we give up any, in interviewing dental students, any sort of manual test, et cetera.

Payman L:
Really?

Nairn Wilson:
Just no correlation at all between carving bits of wax or bending bits of wire or whatever and outcome in terms of who gets through the finals exam or who goes on to be a good dentist. No correlation at all. Within the range of normality, yes, people can become good as a matter of practise and commitment, of course. A lot of people fell beside the wayside, were in the wrong place. Didn’t have the commitment for dentistry. Their heart wasn’t in it and maybe they’d been wrongly advised or misunderstood. Many young people who had only ever had orthodontics and then suddenly realising that dentistry is about lots of filling your teeth. 70% of the time, what do dentist do? Fill teeth. Fill and repair teeth. So many people who didn’t make the course, it was more because their heart wasn’t in it and unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time or…

Prav Solanki:
My memory of of the Dean when I was at university was getting sent to see him.

Nairn Wilson:
To be congratulated, was it?

Prav Solanki:
Unfortunately not, no.

Payman L:
I thought you were top of your class and all that?

Prav Solanki:
But it wasn’t for that. Was nothing to do with that. Extracurricular activity should we say. What’s the craziest thing that somebody has been sent to see you about?

Payman L:
Good question.

Nairn Wilson:
Well…

Payman L:
Can I get this one on video?

Nairn Wilson:
Yes.

Payman L:
Go on, prof.

Nairn Wilson:
No, I think one of the funniest ones was, not long at King’s and students had a ball and they decided they were going to have it at the war museum in London. And as these events are, there was a bit of boisterous activity and a bit of drink taking, et cetera and somebody managed to break the top or the lid off a Sherman tank. And before the curator of the war museum got to me, the student dragged himself out of bed with a bad hangover and thought he’d better come and tell me about it before I get the phone call. This rather sheepish looking, hung over student in my office at half past eight the next morning explaining to me that there’s going to be a bit of a problem because not only had they broken it off, but they’d taken it home. The other two-

Payman L:
Oh my God.

Nairn Wilson:
Thought it was a great souvenir for the ball. Great trophy.

Prav Solanki:
Sounds about right.

Nairn Wilson:
We had to both return top off the Sherman tank and to get some specialty welder man in at some cost to repair the lid on the Sherman tank.

Payman L:
That’s pretty good one.

Prav Solanki:
That’s a really good one, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you keep a straight face throughout that whole-

Nairn Wilson:
No. It was difficult. Having done one or two things my time, I can understand how these things happen and pretty good to break a tank.

Prav Solanki:
It’s a good effort.

Payman L:
You went from there to being president of the GDC?

Nairn Wilson:
No, no.

Payman L:
President’s wrong word?

Nairn Wilson:
No, no. President of the GDC came ’97. I was still in Manchester. I was pro vice chancellor by that time and again, the norm had been somebody at or about to retire, to be president the GDC who was always had been a really senior person who, at the time, Deans of dental school were on the GDC. When a Dean at Manchester had been on the GDC for four or five years because I’ve been Dean at Manchester, so I was on the GDC as a member. And Sunday before the election for the new president, which took place on the Friday, one of the members phoned me up and said, “With all the things that have to happen in a way of getting into lifelong, sorting out the dental team and various other things, there’s a group of us who really think a younger person ought to do this rather than more of the same with an older person.

Nairn Wilson:
Took myself off for a long walk Sunday afternoon and talked to the family about it because at the time it was a big commitment. It was typically three, four days a week in London, the way it was run at that time, old style dental council, 52 people, et cetera and the president chaired all the conduct committees and so on. Big commitment. The big problem was, well, if I stood back I’d only be 52. It’s five years, no renewal. A one off appointment. If I do it, what do I do afterwards? Typically, if it doesn’t go well…

Prav Solanki:
Am I right in understanding you were invited to apply?

Nairn Wilson:
Encouraged-

Prav Solanki:
Headhunted?

Nairn Wilson:
Encouraged by other members to put my name forward at the last minute. It was pretty much, almost a coronation, going to be a coronation for an older person until this splinter group approached me and said, “Will you put your name forward?”

Payman L:
This is before DCPs had to be registered?

Nairn Wilson:
Oh yes, yes, yes.

Payman L:
Did you bring that in?

Nairn Wilson:
Part of it. Dean Margaret Seaward started the process, but it was a long drawn out process because you had to change the dentist act and so on, but I introduced a specialist’s list, largely did all the ground work for the CPD stuff, a lifelong learning with my successor Hugh Matheson and similarly with the DCPs and so on. A lot of the groundwork was done during the time I was president.

Payman L:
What’s your view of the situation with the GDC now?

Nairn Wilson:
Look back in sadness in a way. I think it lost its way. I think it’s working hard to try and come back. I think there’s some improvement in the last year or two, which is great.

Payman L:
But what went wrong?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, I always described it, saying, when I was president of the GDC, it was like walking a tight rope. If you lent too much towards the profession it was protectionism. If you lent too much towards the patient, although you were there primarily to protect the patients, you were effectively policing the profession. See, I think that’s a very delicate balance. I liked the straddling for the GDC when I was there, was protecting the patients. That’s our regulator. They are first and foremost to do, protect the patient, but the second half was supporting the profession. Protecting patients, supporting the profession.

Nairn Wilson:
And when I was president of GDC I did things like I went and did a lot of lecturing sections and branches of the BDA and all sorts of things all over the country because it’s UK wide. Now, always used to start and say, “Come here first, congratulate you all. 99 point something percent of you are hardworking, ethical dentists and I’m here to ask you for your support to help find the colleagues who have lost their way or in problems or whatever and I can keep your registration fee down as well.” And relating to the profession and working with them to encourage, because I was under no illusions at that time. I was also the custodian of professionalism for their profession. What is lost at GDC became much more of policing the profession and they gave up looking after the professionalism element, in my mind, and they’d became-

Payman L:
But why? How? More lay members came in.

Nairn Wilson:
I wouldn’t blame it on the lay members.

Payman L:
Dental law partnership might have something to do with it.

Nairn Wilson:
Could well do. A combination of things probably.

Payman L:
Perfect storm sort of thing.

Nairn Wilson:
And of course after, not so much in dentistry, all the things that happen in medicine, the scandals about-

Payman L:
Shipman.

Nairn Wilson:
Shipman and BB Heart Surgery and pathologists doing things, keeping people’s brains in Liverpool and all sorts of things.

Payman L:
For me, I think the patient is in the worst situation now than they were 10 years ago.

Nairn Wilson:
I maintain that as well. I don’t think they’re in a better place. I think because a lot of dentists admit as in medicine, as in other regulated healthcare practise, a lot of defensive medicine, stroke dentistry and is that in the best interest of patients? Because you hear sad stories of colleagues, not necessarily just young colleagues confronted with a patient needs molar endo, they look at it and if it’s not dead straight root canals or readily accessible to say either, “Have you got the money to go and see a specialist endodontist?” Or, “I’ll take the tooth out for you.”

Nairn Wilson:
Where my day when you were judged at the GDC of doing things a reasonable body of dentists would do or having a reasonable body of dentists would achieve with that root filling, they might no get a perfect root filling, but to my mind, if the dentist root-filled the tooth and kept in your mouth for 10, 15 years before it wasn’t a perfect root fillings, something did go wrong. But to give the patient 10 or 15 years might well have been able to be retreated or before it was extracted. But now, frightened to do that-

Payman L:
And the man in the street hasn’t got 1,000 pounds for a tooth. That’s the sad situation we’re in.

Nairn Wilson:
And given the choice, rather than have it taken out because I don’t have 1,000 pounds, would you like a dentist to give it his best shot?

Payman L:
Yeah, exactly.

Prav Solanki:
Hold onto it for a bit longer.

Nairn Wilson:
10 years down the line I might go wrong and you might need to have it out then or you might need to then go and see a specialist or have a bit of surgery or something. I know I would want. A combination of things and I think a lot of people who fell foul of the GDC and what, when we look back in history, what we’ve seen in a dark period and it’s time, you were judged by specialists and so on rather than by other practising dentists to say, “Actually typical dentist, that’s no bad, actually.” That’s pretty much what most people achieve and judged by peers, genuine peers rather than by absolute standards et cetera.

Nairn Wilson:
A combination things are lost I think. I think they were trying and the people there present are trying to bring it back a little bit. I personally still think it’s unfortunate that the chair, no longer a president, is not a dentist. I personally think it would be better and I think there are plenty of people in dentistry who would have the skills and capabilities to head up the GDC. I think we’ve got people in the profession who could do that job. That’s a personal view, but I think it was unfortunate.

Nairn Wilson:
A lot of pressures and other health care because of all the Shipmans and stuff, the concerns the professions we’re covering these things up are not capable of finding the Shimpans and so on that healthcare regulation changed. But as you said, was the patient better off for it? I’m not convinced.

Payman L:
Yeah, me neither.

Nairn Wilson:
There has been a price to pay for it and it’s a long way back and it’s really sad. Young colleagues frightened of the GDC.

Prav Solanki:
Terrified.

Nairn Wilson:
Terrified.

Payman L:
That’s the number one thing on their mind. The number one thing when you talk to a young dentist.

Nairn Wilson:
You shouldn’t be, a regulator. You should be there to facilitate good things happening to patients. Yeah.

Payman L:
Prof, there would be no, going to where we are, we were talking to Tif Qureshi about it as well. He was saying there’s no way he would have tried doing some of the things he did. There would be no Enlighten, we wouldn’t have tried different types of protocols and things if we were all sitting there scared of this regulator the whole time. Let alone day to day, all the pain that’s going out there for dentists everyday.

Nairn Wilson:
As I said, it’s a delicate balance. You shouldn’t be cavalier and patients are not Guinea pigs. You shouldn’t be doing crazy experiments on patients. That’s wrong. But within things, I always believe, could you stand up and justify what you’re going to do? If you could reasonably justify and other similar general dental practise to say, “Under those circumstances, yeah, I did. Rather than take the tooth out or tried this or done this and tried to save it in the knowledge that it might not work or whatever.” But now, of course, young people scared of the GDC and they just take the tooth out or refer it on and-

Payman L:
I mean, back in my day it was maybe the 10th thing on your mind. It needed to be something on your mind for sure, but you’re right. There’s a balance, but now it’s the number one thing when everyone’s mind and all decisions are made based on that.

Nairn Wilson:
And I’ve not been personally involved in a cases but hear really sad stories of people, colleagues of all ages and all levels of seniority and throughout their profession whose lives have been torn apart over two, three years. Not only questioned whether the thing ought to be taken and seen as potentially professional misconduct, but they don’t deal with expeditiously. And some of the wait times and the delays and really, sorry cases of people. Some of our colleagues have reported them afterwards given them lectures about what it was like to be at the receiving end of this and it shouldn’t be that.

Prav Solanki:
I find the frustrating thing, certainly with a lot of a lot of my clients and dentists that I’m close to, is the moment from receiving that letter to anything happening, the sleepless nights, the worry, the what ifs, the anxiety-

Payman L:
The number of suicides there’s been. I mean, when it gets to that.

Nairn Wilson:
Oh, and you got to let legal process go through and people get 28 days to respond and so many days to do this and that. Inevitably it gets dragged out to this certain thing that you can’t sort out overnight. And it always was that way. You got to go through legal process and give people opportunity to respond and do this and get suitably prepared for hearings and so on. Well, fine, but dragging it out over a two years in some cases.

Prav Solanki:
Building on that theme, prof, what’s your biggest clinical mistake?

Nairn Wilson:
I wouldn’t say much mistake, regret looking back, which was normal in my time was a very interventive approach to managing things. And when I was training for restorative dentistry, it was vogue and the thing at the time to do multiple crowns including full mouth rehabilitations. ear to ear crowns. 28 crowns.

Prav Solanki:
Unnecessarily, or…

Nairn Wilson:
Looking back now it was the thing that was advocated and if you went to North America or North Americans came and lectured here, it’s the sort of thing you were seeing. You saw in textbooks. I was trained to do it and before a lot of the things we know have, things like precision attachments, an intercoronal precision attachment, you got it a lot off a tooth, a lot of tooth to accommodate that. And of course the porcelains weren’t as good as they are now so you had to have full preps because remember metal ceramic crowns were something new to me. It was gold crowns and porcelain jacket crowns when I started. You had to have full shoulders. One and a half millimetre shoulders of porcelain and doing full mouth including lower incisors and yes, I believe the research that if you do full depth preps on teeth one in five is probably nonvital at five years. Serial tooth killer.

Nairn Wilson:
I must have, and of course I doing it to relatively young people and as I would say to anybody, if your crowns last 15, 20 years that’s pretty good. But if he did that to a 30 year old who had extensive tooth surface loss because of regurgitation or whatever or where… and you did that, they’re only going to be 45 or 50 when it all goes wrong or needs to be redone.

Prav Solanki:
At best.

Nairn Wilson:
And redoing it is twice as hard as doing it the first time. You got to get all the crowns off first without taking the cores off the teeth and so on. Just getting it taken off to start again is a huge job, but looking back, it wasn’t wrong at the time.

Nairn Wilson:
It was rogue but I regret that I’m now very committed to minimal intervention and yes, there are times a dentist’s got to do what a dentist’s got to do. And if there’s still teeth that need crowned, and if you’re going to crown it do it well, for the patient’s sake, accept the risk and consenting it to say, that’s a very brutal thing to do for a tooth. And it might die in five years and we might have to root it. And so as long as they understand that. There are times, you still need to do the odd crown here and there, you can do a lot by adding on composite and ceramics and all sorts of temporary materials but there’s still times you’ve got do crowns. So looking back, I mean it was the right thing to do at the time but from what I know now.

Prav Solanki:
I guess fashions change, don’t they?

Nairn Wilson:
It wasn’t so much fashion it was thinking. It was accepted at the time, but equally, pleased to say I did some more very good things. Even to this day. My wife always laughs. We went back to Edinburgh two or three years ago. Went up to a match at Murrayfield, or something. Somebody couldn’t go and we got their tickets or something. So we went out for a weekend, I was walking around Edinburgh and a gentleman stopped me and he said, “It’s Dr. Wilson, isn’t it?” And he said, “Still got your teeth.”

Payman L:
A patient?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah.

Payman L:
It must have felt great. Did you meet your wife in university?

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah, she’s not a dentist.

Payman L:
She’s Scottish as well?

Nairn Wilson:
No. No, she’s not. She was born in Northern Ireland and spent some time in Wales in her early years, but we met in Manchester.

Payman L:
How soon did you get married after qualifying? Was it?

Nairn Wilson:
Fairly quick. It was actually a second marriage for me, with my present wife. So no, we met when we were about 30 or something, 30. So, but nope, still going strong. A good relationship. Yeah.

Payman L:
Prof you set up both LonDEC and MANDEC?

Nairn Wilson:
Yep.

Payman L:
Tell us a little bit, expand on the need for those. I mean beautiful things, wonderful things. Massive assets to the profession. The need for those, funding, getting the thing up and going. The difference between Manchester and London in that sense? I mean you did London I guess while you were at King’s?

Nairn Wilson:
Yep. Well, a great chat. No, it was very simple. Being at Manchester, there was a lot of pressure. Hands-on courses were gaining popularity and people appreciated all these new materials. You can’t learn about them in a lecture theatre. And hands-on dentists being who they are, a good fiddle with the material you can learn a lot, whether you like it or not, et cetera to understand it. And lot of pressure, can we come and use your clinical simulation, your phantom head facilities? And I’d say, well the students have got to come first so you can come in the evenings only or weekends. But if you come at weekends, a lot of cost to open the building up and security and this, that and the other. And of course you could come at holiday times, but you say, well would people want a course there? And holidays taking their kids on holiday and so on, because there’s school holidays.

Nairn Wilson:
So there’s all this tension about you’ve got these facilities and they’re only used so many days a year, but we can access them to do this hands-on postgraduate stuff. So we came up with the idea of sort of a dedicated centre for education where people could be accommodated anytime of the week. The students didn’t go and therefore, and students are pretty brutal with equipment, so the equipment would be usable as well. And that was born the idea of MANDEC. And it was going to be expensive, 3.75 million in cost. People said you’re crazy, as in any time, nobody’s got that sort of money to give you. Never say never. And …

Payman L:
So where’d you get the money?

Nairn Wilson:
Everywhere and anywhere I could get my hands on it. Everything from not quite shaking the bucket, but I sold ties, little lapel pins. I made a lot of money on those, to big donations. One of the biggest chunks of money was the postgraduate dean at the time, a man, Jeff Taylor, who should take a lot of credit as well. Because I brokered a deal with Jeff that if he could commit money out front, he could have use of this facility a day a week in 10 years, a bit like a mortgage. So if he could give me money out front, he, once we had the centre, he would have free of charge for 10 years, a day a week, in term time. Because the foundation dentists and the people he was supporting doing continuing education, they didn’t come 52 weeks a year but so he did it. So that’s a big chunk of the money.

Payman L:
But where did he get it from, he had a budget for post-grad?

Nairn Wilson:
No, no. Well it was of course within the whole totality of medical and dental postgraduate education, finding a million or whoever. I forget the exact sum, but it was-

Prav Solanki:
A good chunk.

Nairn Wilson:
A million plus within that huge medical dental, postgraduate budget.

Payman L:
It’s not a big bit.

Nairn Wilson:
It wasn’t a huge bit. So it was money upfront, but it was hand-to-mouth, a little bit. A little bit dealing with new college general dentistry. And I love telling this story that I used to treat the vice chancellor in Manchester. And he’d yet again crushed another filling, a terrible clencher, bust fillings, a stressful job I suppose. So he came over and got on with him well, was chatting away and he said, “You looked a little bit stressed, a bit distracted.” And I said, “Well, I’ve got bit of a problem. The glazing arrives tomorrow and the man wants a check for 20,000 pounds. I’ve got lots of promissory notes, but I haven’t got 20,000 pounds in the bank.”

Nairn Wilson:
So the university had kindly underwritten the whole project, so he said nothing, I fixed his filling, did a bit of a scale and polish on him. He went back to his office and the accountant phoned me up in half an hour and he said, “We’ll cover you tomorrow.”

Nairn Wilson:
But he never forgot. Every time he spoke to you he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you think you’ve an expensive scale and polish. The last one I had cost me 20 grand.”

Prav Solanki:
20 grand scale and polish.

Nairn Wilson:
Yes. 20 grand scale and polish. There we go. But so we got the glazing and the man got his check and there we go. So it was a bit hand-to-mouth but it was a wonderful project and it was great. Industry could see the potentials, a lot of support from and money from dental industry, which was fantastic. A lot of colleagues put their hand in their pocket too, not just buying ties and lapel pins and so on. There was a lot of, for example, we sold name on the back of chairs in the lecture theatre. I think it was 250 quid, but you were immortalised. And they’re still there to this day, either in memory of somebody or your own chair. I sold those in about two weeks.

Payman L:
And they’ve both become massively successful. It’s really hard to rent those facilities out.

Nairn Wilson:
Well when I left Manchester it was fantastic because the day I left Manchester, the person who ran the MANDEC Centre for the next 365 days, they had bookings for 320 of them, just to show. So I went to London, same problem, and it was the other part of the other justification, a great bridge between academia and dental practise. So getting dentists, rather than going to local hotels and fiddling around-

Prav Solanki:
Conference centres.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. A proper place or proper hands-on facilities with turbines and suction and three in ones and et cetera, et cetera, proper light, et cetera, et cetera, can’t beat it if you go for educational value. So when I went to London, high on my agenda, because it was more needed in London than anywhere. Some places did have some facilities, but-

Payman L:
Did you come in saying I’m going to deliver this? Was it part of your?

Nairn Wilson:
I had it in mind as one of the things I was going to do. Because of all the mergers, I can remember I took over that-

Payman L:
GKT?

Nairn Wilson:
GKT business. And my first challenge was to get it to be unified and sort that out. And that was a bit of a challenge. But very quickly thereafter, LonDEC, fashioned very much on MANDEC, I’d learned stuff from MANDEC, so LonDEC was even better. Going back to my philosophy, good today, better tomorrow. Reflect and what can I make it better? So in some respects LonDEC is better than MANDEC.

Payman L:
Was it easier to get the money and all that?

Nairn Wilson:
No. Same sort of deal. Booker was the post graduate dean, to give a chunk of money. And yes, on the success of MANDEC, industry and others sponsors said if you give us the same payback that you did through that, we’ll give you some cash. It wasn’t so expensive. I think LonDEC because they didn’t have to do so much physical building it was about 2 million or something. Somehow by the time it was finished. But again, delighted. Mentally getting the right person in there to run it and Bill Sharplings, a fantastic man. Got him to change his life, to go into it. And he loves it. Or as far as I know, he’s still loving it and doing it himself, but he was just perfect. And again, it’s heavily used. Great facilities I think they’re … Well their practise-

Payman L:
Definitely needed, definitely needed.

Nairn Wilson:
People like to come … You want to come somewhere reasonably comfortable, you get a locker you can put your bag in and you can sit down and have a cup of coffee and everything works. And the people around can help if it doesn’t work. No disrespect to students, but having been got at by the students before you get there and making it work, I mean, I think it’s important.

Payman L:
Tell us about this CGDent.

Prav Solanki:
I was going to say the same thing.

Payman L:
Oh, perfect.

Nairn Wilson:
The new college?

Payman L:
The new college.

Nairn Wilson:
Well as I always start off with saying across health care, just about everybody’s got their own college if not a Royal college, but dentistry doesn’t, we have faculties and dental surgery spread around colleges or surgical colleges and buried in them because of our history of barber surgeon stuff, et cetera, that’s why they are in there. But they typically have lots of differences, different approaches. So dentistry doesn’t have its own college. And to me it’s the third leg of the stool. We should have our regulator, we should have our professional body. So GDC BDA, and the third leg of the stool is a college, ideally a Royal college.

Nairn Wilson:
So FGDP when it started in 1991, said that it’s intention was to become a college at some stage. So their 25th birthday party and some tensions and difficulties with their hosts the Royal College of Surgeons, but 25, they said the time has come. And they I think were very insightful and forward looking. It’s not a case of FGDP becoming a college of general, they want to create a college of general dentistry opportunity for membership for all members of the dental team. Everybody. Yeah.

Payman L:
And FGDP again?

Nairn Wilson:
Yes everybody. And as of when FGDP complete it’s separation from the college of surgeons, because we’ve been in there 25 years, it can’t just get up and walk out. There’s all sorts of stuff about who owns what and IP and money.

Payman L:
Are we talking a building as well? A physical site?

Nairn Wilson:
Well we haven’t got the money at the minute. It’s a bit like other things, have done this a bit hand-to-mouth. So I took on the project because they came and said to me, given all the different things I’ve done in my career, can you lead this? And there’s no manual for how do you create a college, let alone a Royal college. So well, where do we start? Where do you start creating MANDEC? Where do you start creating LonDEC? Whatever, where do you start creating dental materials?

Payman L:
You figure it out.

Nairn Wilson:
You figure it out. So it’s been a fascinating thing to do. And thanks to generosity of principally colleagues who have become founders and founding contributors and I’m now beginning to look at organisations to be corporate sponsors and donors and so on. We’ve managed to finance this so far, we’re well on our way. And we have just a press release today with the first educational offering, IAS Academy with a new diploma for orthodontics for general practitioners. So and we will have a formal launch of this college within three months or so. And still a big hill to climb because we are living a bit hand-to-mouth financially.

Nairn Wilson:
Once FGDP is separated from the college and we start getting their subscription income and so on, then things are very different. But that’s still a year, 18 months or something, potentially down the line. So we’ve got to get from here to there. And under no illusions this has got to appeal to principally younger people because fully understand, unlike in my day, the owner and privilege of being in a college and having initials after your name, doesn’t necessarily cut it for a young colleague, now they say, “Okay, what else do I get? What are the benefits of being in this organisation?”

Nairn Wilson:
So we’re working very hard on member benefits and making it attractive to young people because to be successful it’s not just a case of somebody coming sitting an exam, getting a diploma or a certificate and putting initials on it and going away. We want to keep them as subscribing members. And that’s a challenge to make it.

Prav Solanki:
Just thinking out loud, what is it that these younger members of the profession would want as a member benefits in addition to obviously, coming in, sitting the exam, getting the badge or the title?

Nairn Wilson:
Priority for very high quality CPD, organised, and that’s going to be great for members, et cetera.

Prav Solanki:
With their like suppliers and things like that?

Nairn Wilson:
Possibility of discounts with various things. And yes, we’re actively working on partnership, working with various organisations to hopefully have some of these things. Hopefully, is there any possibility down the line that contracting for services. If I’ve got a fellowship of this new college, is my contracting. rate going to be different, et cetera? Or if I am a fellow do I get a special rate for indemnity insurance or whatever?

Nairn Wilson:
Some incentive because in medicine you aren’t, as I did, the incentive of getting a fellowship where Royal College was as part of my career progression. If I didn’t get my FDS I wasn’t going to progress. And if I wasn’t getting my clinical training I wasn’t going to end up as a specialist in restorative dentistry if I didn’t pass these exams and get these initials after my name. Not that we’re in general practise and unlikely to be so. So it’s got to be on a different-

Payman L:
Do you envisage a day that it would be part of career progression?

Nairn Wilson:
Yes. And the new college is working on a brand new career pathway for people in general dentistry, all members of the dental team.

Payman L:
Yeah. I mean it’s a huge problem it’s it? It’s a huge problem that a nurse hasn’t got anywhere to go career wise.

Nairn Wilson:
Well, they do at the minute they can do post qualification diplomas and things like conscious sedation, oral health education, et cetera. There’s a range, the National Examination Board for Dental Nurses, which I was a trustee for a while, they do have post qualification things, but bringing these on so that they could be seen to be an advanced practitioner type nurse or whatever. And giving incentive, and they probably are in a position that if you’re a nurse and get these diplomas and so on, maybe you will be happy to pay her more because she can do more functions and things in the practise as an advanced level, hygienists might do, the same thing.

Nairn Wilson:
So they may well be incentivized because they are greater value, but it’s getting that through to the dentists particularly with corporates and so on. Maybe within corporate, so it might be easier that the dentists who have got certain qualifications maybe oversees a number of practises or runs a practise or becomes a clinical advisor or whatever.

Payman L:
What should dentists and DCPs do right now, if they want to get more involved in this?

Nairn Wilson:
First and foremost, go onto the website. I am desperate to get people to sign up as supporters. No consequences of costs, any other strings attached. I need supporters because when I go to the privy council to ask for a charter, a charter so that we can award diplomas and certificates and so on, hopefully a Royal charter, one of the first questions is well, who’s supporting you? And many people in the profession who are supporting you.

Payman L:
Got you. So how do they do that?

Nairn Wilson:
Go online, it’s a two minute process.

Payman L:
What’s the website?

Nairn Wilson:
It’s College of General Dentistry: https://cgdent.uk.

Payman L:
Cgdent.uk.

Nairn Wilson:
.uk.

Payman L:
And there’s a subscribe?

Nairn Wilson:
And just, I think the top line just says, support us. Click on that and you can sign and support. And if people want to get more involved, if they would like to donate, you can be a contributor, a phone in contributor or a founder and you have these opportunities until we formally launch the college. So if you’d like to be immortalised, your name will go on a role of honour. And as soon as we do host some premises, it will be reproduced and hung up in a prominent place and it will be there, someone hopes and 4 or 500 years when they celebrate this, they can look at this list and toast and say, I don’t know who these guys were, people, sorry, ladies. I could do with more ladies contributing to this college with …

Payman L:
Prof, I’ve got a question for you.

Nairn Wilson:
But no, that’s where we are and it’s, I’m delighted that it is going to happen and we, dentistry, is going to have it’s own independent, hopefully Royal college.

Prav Solanki:
Amazing.

Nairn Wilson:
Which will set standards and I will attain, going back to what we said earlier, it will become a custodian of professionalism.

Nairn Wilson:
It’s not a job with the BDA, it’s a trade union. It supports it and so on. And we can get into a situation where as, with the Royal College of General Practise for medics and the BMA of jointly hopefully moving the profession forward and looking towards a brighter future. It’s a very historic development, third leg in the stool, as I said.

Payman L:
It’s a common thing people say, I’ve heard them say it many times Prav, that when we talk about how do we get into this mess. In this particular area of dentistry, people blame our leaders. It’s very common. And would you, you’ve been a leader in every aspect of dentistry. You’ve been a leader in industry. Two of the universities, the GDC, the BDA, which we haven’t even discussed yet, the nursing thing. Now the call is your a leader in dentistry. When people say our leaders are failing us, how does that make you feel? What do you say to that?

Nairn Wilson:
We don’t live in a dictatorship. So the power you’ve got as a leader, we live in a democracy and people are free to do what they want to do and you can’t control everything. Nobody has that power. You can only show the way. Encourage people down the way. You can’t dictate to them. And there’s been lots of things we talked about, defensive dentistry, temptations to get into dental spas and things. Not, I do believe in tooth whitening. I believe that there’s a therapeutic element to it that you can make a person feel younger, brighter, more confident. Not by giving them very white teeth but lightening the teeth up a little bit, making them look more youthful. Yeah, it’s good.

Nairn Wilson:
And yes, I believe dentists should do selective soft tissue aesthetics and I used a lot myself, the older person with chronic angular colitis, and you give them a new denture, you can’t build them a way out to get rid of the folds at the corner mouth but give them a nice denture that gives them more support and a little bit of Botox, just to relax them, it gets rid of the colitis or the very tight mentalis muscle or the grinder, a little bit in masseter muscles. I’ve done this, I did it 10, 15 years ago when I treated chronic grinders and wear cases and so on, and it works very well.

Nairn Wilson:
So selective, but it comes back to a principal I had at the GDC and I still believe today, and I think it was unfortunate the GDC in its dark period defined what dentistry was. I don’t think you should define it. Dentistry is what dentists do and if a reasonable body of dentists do Botox or whitening, then it’s dentistry. And the job of the GDC should be to then regulate it, that people are properly trained and people have recourse if it goes wrong or it’s misused.

Nairn Wilson:
So if dentists are doing this, I think you except the regulator, to me, you should accept it and say, right now we regulate it and people are properly trained to do it and there is recourse to the patients if it goes wrong or it’s misused or whatever. That’s the way it should evolve to me, to my thinking.

Nairn Wilson:
And I very much hope that we get back to that and hopefully our college will encourage this as well. What’s dentistry going to be in 2050? It’s going to be very different from what it is now. What sorts of procedures, new diseases and things, people living in goodness knows what age and how do we keep teeth to 120 or something? Because I maintain, I think one of the big next boom is anti-ageing dentistry.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah. For sure.

Nairn Wilson:
Of preserving teeth. Not until 80, 90. 110, 120, might be the norm in 2050 with advances in medicine, how do we keep the teeth going then? Or look after periodontal tissues. Yeah. Because you look at a 90 year old, you think, haven’t the teeth done well. But how do we … And that’s one of the challenges that people are going to live longer, we’ve got to give them teeth for life.

Prav Solanki:
Functional teeth.

Nairn Wilson:
Functional teeth. Because you’re shuffling around in your residential home, or whatever it is you are, one of the big treats of the day is lunch. Will I be able to eat it? Will I enjoy it? And I don’t want to eat it through bits of plastic and stuff. I want my own teeth. That’s your job dentists. And I think it’s a huge challenge for the profession and amongst all the other stuff we’ve got. Too much caries in kids and all these GAs but the other, come on, we’ve got to step up in the research should be happening now, of new techniques, new materials, new approaches to give people teeth relief.

Prav Solanki:
I’ve got a question for you Prof and it’s sort of a little bit dentist related, a little bit not, is that, let’s say it’s your last day on the planet and you’ve got a couple of bits of advice to give-

Nairn Wilson:
Will I be thinking dentistry.

Prav Solanki:
And you’ve already spoke about, you spend a lot of time reflecting about being better tomorrow than you are today and rather than yesterday. So if you were to give a few bits of advice to the dental profession, what would they be? And if you were to give a few bits of advice to children, what would they be?

Nairn Wilson:
Well, let’s start with the kids and say, follow your heart. Don’t be frightened to take bold steps. And if you’re not happy, do something about it. Get out there and change if you feel as you’re not going to be happy doing this change it. Your futures in your hands.

Prav Solanki:
As you did.

Nairn Wilson:
Yeah. It’s painful. Yeah. For three months and you do something and you think, why did I do this? But once you get past the initial period, you think, whoa, that’s great. You know, lots of new challenges, things et cetera. And to follow your heart to look for happiness. Don’t say, “Oh, I got it all wrong and I’m now stuck here.” No, go out and change it. It might be tough, it might be hard. You might put yourself in a position you don’t have a lot of money for a while or whatever, but go and do it, would be the advice to the kids.

Nairn Wilson:
Profession, have confidence in yourself. Pursue something such as a Royal college and make it a huge success. We’re good, a fantastic history, and I think we can do huge things for people because oral health is such an important thing to general health and wellbeing through all life. Notably in older age. We’ve got a huge challenge ahead of us and if we’re going to fulfil our destiny and realise our potential, we’ve got to work together through something such as a Royal college and supporting the BDAs supporting a good trade union and move ahead so that we can all, at the end of the day, on the last day of the planet, sit and think, gosh, I’ll get no more time, but what time I had, we put to good use. And we hopefully left a better place than where we found it.

Payman L:
Made a difference.

Nairn Wilson:
Made a difference. Yep.

Payman L:
Amazing.

Nairn Wilson:
So I’m not going to lie on my deathbeds thinking, I should have filled another tooth. Yep. But making a difference. And if I feel I can get there and I often say that I feel I’ve been really lucky in dentistry and there are two things I say, the more I do, the luckier I get. And the more you do, you do bring your own luck and opportunity and so on. If you sit there just complaining, it doesn’t happen. Go and look for it, and go and find it. Go with it.

Nairn Wilson:
And the other thing is you try and put back as much as you get. And hard as I try, I still feel, and I suspect time will never put as much back into dentistry as it’s given me because it’s been a great career, I really enjoyed myself. It’s been very fulfilling. It’s provided opportunity to live comfortably, bring my kids up and do all these things, et cetera, and help them get established. Fantastic. And there’s been some great experiences down the way and it’s been wonderful. So no regrets.

Nairn Wilson:
When you look back, of course things you could have done things differently or better, but hey, live the day and move on.

Payman L:
Yeah. You’re a massive inspiration. Prof

Prav Solanki:
Yeah. Massive. Thank you so much.

Nairn Wilson:
It’s a great pleasure to talk about it and I encourage you young colleagues you, it is a great profession. Confidence. Go for it. Make it important, make a difference. Realise your potential. There we go.

Prav Solanki:
Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.

Outro Voice:
This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in dentistry, your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Prav Solanki:
Hey guys, and thank you for listening to today’s episode of the dental leaders podcast, a vision that myself and Payman had over two years ago now. And if you have got some value out of today, just hit the subscribe button in iTunes or Google Play or whatever you’re listening to. Let us know in your comments what you actually got out of the episode because we love sitting back and reading those reviews. It really does make our day.

Payman L:
It’s a real pleasure to do this. It’s fun to do, but I’m really humbled that you’re actually listening all the way through to the end and join us again. If you got some value out of it please share it. Thanks a lot.