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Dental tour hits Blackpool
14th Jun 2010
Online registration for the 2010 National Dental Nursing Conference is now live! I finally won the battle with the technology to get details of the Conference onto the CVENT site. It's very clever, but complicated... at least for someone who started her professional life when state of the art meant manual typewriters, telex machines and Roneo stencilling machine. In other words, before computers, mobile phones or even photocopying machines!
Anyway, managed to sort my way through the technological maze with the help of several hundred emails and dozens of telephone calls from the cvent help team, who very patiently talked me through the various stages.
This is where the Yanks have a huge advantage – they do customer service so well! Not once did a member of their team say 'you silly old bat, I've told you that 20 times already, why can't you do it right?'
Instead, they are very patient – and very polite; it's all 'ma'am this' and 'ma'am that', which makes me feel about 100 years old! We do have a few language problems ('required' means 'mandatory' in the US, for example).
Luckily, having lived in the US I have a fairly wide american vocabulary, so the only problem is my accent – Americans think all brits speak like the Queen, so a Lancashire accent causes some difficulty!
The other problem organising a conference is rounding up all the speakers and getting them to send their info well in advance. We've got most of it now, so everyone booking a conference place can see what's on offer and choose which presentations they want to attend.
We've got speakers on professionalism, setting up a practice, oral health, indemnity, podiatry, dental hypnosis, radiography, cross infection, career development, disaster victim identification and the GDC.
BADN Council and staff are testing the buffet menus next week at the Council meeting (it's a tough job, but someone has to do it), we've organised a caricaturist to come along and draw pictures of delegates, the photographer is booked and Katie and I will be checking out local bands for the after dinner entertainment (again, tough, but...), and arranging VIP entry to local nightclubs for those who want to brave the nightlife of big, bad Blackpool.
Am seriously considering going into wedding planning as a sideline – dealing with Bridezilla and her mother would be a breeze after organising dental nurse conferences for nearly 20 years!
We're a bit conferenced-out, having been to the Dental Technology Show in Coventry and then the BDA Conference in Liverpool last month. Inbetween, I went to Belfast (three hours sitting on a plane at Blackpool Airport cos they couldn't get the door to close!), add in a few trips to London and for a month I literally came home, unpacked, did laundry, packed, and took off again.
The cat thinks she's become an orphan, my neighbours think I'm moonlighting as something glamorous, and my Weightwatchers leader thinks I should try harder to stick to the WW plan!
Am putting links to Conference on our website and on our Facebook page right now, so look forward to seeing you there!
Vist www.badn.org.uk
Author
Pam Swain
Pam Swain is chief executive of the British Association of Dental Nurses (BADN) who describes herself as ‘chief cook and bottle washer' for the association and admits she can be 'stroppy'.
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