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...

My 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 coordinator and acting director. My Central Coast, Local Health District, Dental Services experiences again fed my public health mindset, and I enjoyed every minute of my career in that environment.

During this period of my employment, I completed a health promotion certificate, a business management diploma and in 2006 enrolled in the newly established dental hygiene program offered at the University of Newcastle. Several dental therapists from the Central Coast applied and we all gained places. We got maximum credit for our dental therapy qualification and currency of practice and so started in the second year of the program. It wasn’t easy returning to student life after years of working as a dental practitioner, but hygiene degrees we wanted; and hygiene degrees we all got. What a joy it was to graduate together, a big group of dental therapists, finally able to call ourselves oral health therapists. On graduation day we totally loved wearing those academic gowns and caps!

Then in 2008, I joined the University of Newcastle as a conjoint lecturer to establish an oral health student placement program in Residential Aged Care Facilities and this position started my academic career and my PhD.

In 2010, I worked with A/Professor Fiona Blinkhorn to co-write the Graduate Diploma in Dental Therapy, this postgraduate qualification enabled those graduates with hygiene degrees to add dental therapy to their toolkit and we graduated five cohorts with superior postgraduate dental therapy qualifications.

In 2015, Professor Jane Taylor and I co-wrote a combined hygiene and dental therapy program, the first adult scope of practice oral health therapy program in NSW (hats off to A/Professor Leonie Short who was already offering this adult scope of practice at CQU). This ten-year period of my career was super hard work, but so rewarding, I became the Program Convenor and then Head of Discipline at the University of Newcastle and I had the pleasure of working with a team of dedicated and remarkable people, my then work family.

The aged care student placement program developed into the Senior Smiles program and is supported by two major philanthropic grants. Assistance from my operations manager, Sarah Griffiths and the Senior Smiles team has seen the program gain momentum in the last five years and constant lobbying resulted in my witness statement to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. This evidence was instrumental in achieving Recommendation 38; employ or retain an oral health therapist in all Residential Aged Care Facilities. The Senior Smiles program has opened the doors for oral health practitioners to work in this environment and ultimately, I want to see our profession employed in Residential Aged Care Facilities, hospital wards and all other healthcare settings. People deserve holistic care that includes oral health, it’s not an add-on luxury, it’s a necessity, of course, we all know that!

Last year I moved to the University of Sydney, Australia’s first Dental School, as Professor of Oral Health, I feel so honoured to be working at this sandstone university, the third female professor in the dental school in 120 years and only the second Professor of Oral Health in Australia (I’m honoured to be in the company of Professor Julie Satur, the very first Professor of Oral Health in Australia, from the University of Melbourne).

There is still so much to do and in my new position at the University of Sydney – innovation and exciting plans for the future of our profession are underway. I’m looking forward to working towards enabling our profession to transition into the general health care space to work with other medical and health care professionals where providing holistic care will really make a difference to individuals and communities.

Our profession has developed incredibly in the last decade and there are many more opportunities ahead. I encourage you all to think outside the square, never accept that change isn’t possible and work within collegial teams to achieve the best possible oral health care for our communities – nothing less is acceptable! There is still so much to do and in my new position at the University of Sydney – innovation and exciting plans for the future of our profession are underway.