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M Leading Lady The recent appointment of Dr Janet Wallace as Professor of Oral Health at the Sydney Dental School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, makes her only the third female professor at the Sydney Dental School Dentistry, The University of Sydney in its 120-year history. Here she describes her journey and her hopes for the future of our profession...
y oral health career started as a junior dental assistant in private practice in Sydney, NSW and then later as a senior dental assistant at Hornsby Hospital on the North Shore. I loved the public hospital environment and have some really powerful memories of patients who had treatment that was life-changing for them. This is really where my love of public health started. While working at Hornsby Hospital I completed my dental assistant’s proficiency certificate and my dental radiography certificate, and for a couple of years, I was an assistant TAFE teacher in the dental assistant’s radiography course. The hospital clinic had associated school dental clinics and I was often sent to work with the dental therapists at Beecroft and Berowra. I marvelled at their skills in managing children and their ability to administer blocks on young patients, they really inspired me, and I longed to pursue that career path. However, marriage, a mortgage and two babies put that on hold for a decade and when my youngest child, Sarah was one, I applied to the Westmead School of Dental Therapy and was successful in gaining a place. There were only nine students in my cohort and I’m still in contact with a few of these amazing women, one of them currently supervises a couple of PhD students with me. After graduation, I worked in a 12-month relief dental therapists’ position at Central Coast, Local Health District where I rotated from clinic to clinic on a daily basis. I worked with some incredibly capable and passionate dentists, dental therapists and dental assistants and learned so much from all of them, but especially from my senior dental therapists (Dr Kay Franks and Mrs Lee Walpole). These women were invincible, extracting permanent teeth, restoring huge cavities, and managing endless wait-lists, they really showed me how it was done. I will be forever grateful to them for their mentoring and friendship. This 12-month position turned into decades of employment in a variety of roles including community dental health program officer, child dental services manager, health promotion
