Editorial
A call to support research activities in non-academic dental sectors in Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, within the last
twenty-five years, was successful in building a strong and state-of-the-art
dental system with the emergence of dental schools and health colleges,
specialty dental centers and thousands of dental clinics in the government and
private sectors.
Statistics of
articles submitted for publication in the Saudi Dental Journal within the last
ten years, however, showed a very low percentage (less than 5%) of articles
submitted for publication from clinicians who work mainly in the dental clinics
in either private or government sectors. Majority of the publications came from
clinicians or researchers who work in the academic dental department. In order to
encourage clinicians to take a more active involvement in the research
activities, the following critical points are forwarded:
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Authority
personnel like directors of hospitals, department chairmen and directors of
primary health medical centers should believe in the importance of their
clinicians to be involved in research especially in researches which deal with
their daily problems as well as descriptive statistical research.
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Interested
clinicians must be granted time in their clinical weekly schedule which could
be devoted for research.
-
Financial and
manpower support should be made available for the research projects. This
therefore implies that private organizations should incorporate these in their
annual budgets thereby encouraging organizational support of research in
government and private dental clinics.
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Networking is
extremely necessary with research centers like universities, big dental centers
and departments in the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defense, National Guard,
Security Forces
Hospital, King Abdulaziz
City for Science and
Technology and private sectors where a host of research facilities are
available.
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Dentists and
dental personnel involved in dental research projects in their clinics or
departments should receive credit for their research involvement in their
annual evaluation and consequently becomes the basis for future promotion or
post-graduate scholarship.
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Organizing
committees of dental meetings in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia should
provide clinicians with venues for presentation of their researches thereby
enabling other dental societies to be aware of their work.
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As an
institutional recommendation, the Saudi Dental Society of the College of Dentistry,
King Saud University, should establish a research committee to
provide fund support, research advisory, statistic consultation and
editing support for those clinicians who need it.
It is my
strong belief that the above prescriptions have addressed the crucial points
necessary to provide the support mechanisms to encourage dental research from
among those in the non-academic sectors within the Kingdom. Being at the
thresholds of a new millennium, I have deep faith that once implemented, these can led to the burgeoning of
researches from the non-academic sector which, in the final analysis,
could tremendously improve the quality of dental delivery system in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah Rakeeb Al Shammery, BDS, MS
Restorative Dental
Sciences Department,
College of Dentistry, King Saud University,
Editor-in-Chief,
The Saudi Dental Journal and President, The Saudi Dental Society.
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