Students brush up on dental work

Some of UQ’s brightest veterinary science students were put through their dentistry paces at the weekend.

Nine promising final-year students drilled, cleaned and rasped their way through 40 sets of horse teeth, at an advanced equine dentistry workshop at UQ Gatton.

They were: Philippa Bacon (Mount Crosby), Steven Bliss (Taringa), David Cook (Chapel Hill), Shannon Lee (Clear Island Waters), Andrea Master (Toowong), Scott McIntosh (Graceville), Amanda Reichstein (Kenmore), Felicity Smout (Diddillibah) and Jacqui Wilkinson (St Lucia).

Adjunct Associate Professor Gary Wilson of UQ’s School of Veterinary Science and Grafton’s Equine Veterinary Dental Service Principal Oliver Liyou taught the students, taking their dentistry skills to that of an advanced vet.

“They did the dental work on a series of horses, initially working with hand tools then eventually up to power equipment,” Associate Professor Wilson said.

He said students had applied for the workshop as it was offered as a scholarship, called the Wilson-Liyou Scholarships in Equine Dentistry.

Associate Professor Wilson said keeping graduate vets well trained in equine dentistry was vital because there were some equine dentists who were illegally working and extracting teeth around Australia.

“The horse industry perceives that if someone calls themselves a horse dentist, that they have a higher level of skill because they used to the human term, dentist,” he said.

“But most of them don’t have the level of training that even a new graduate veterinarian has, let alone a veterinarian that has done advanced equine dentistry workshops.”

Media: Associate Professor Wilson (0418 873 434, 3822 2333) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (3365 2619)