Milan, January 2024 – Tecnodentalsmart courses will be held at Tecnodental Forum during Expodental Meeting in Rimini, Italy. Currently, there are about 8,500 dental laboratories in Italy with approximately 37,000 employees and 3,000 independent professionals.
Over the past decade, despite an increase in the number of dentists and hygienists, there has been a decrease in the dental laboratory workforce.
Dental laboratories, which once employed more than one person in addition to the owner, are now declining.
Continuing education, often business-related, is very important in a changing market.
Most courses and conferences are about operational aspects related to a manufacturing or commercial enterprise in the industry.
And this trend has as a downside the fact that refresher training is often too tied to a specific material, not taking into account the diverse needs of professionals.
Despite this, there are still places where cultural training is offered independent of the commercial aspect, putting the acquisition of techniques first and not the final product. Tecnodental Forum 2024, therefore, has decided to experiment with a new formula, aimed not only at dental laboratory owners, but also at employees who wish to expand their knowledge in digital or improve their skills in analog techniques, through the organization of hands-on courses, where participants will be able to interact with the lecturer in real time and experience specific solutions to everyday problems for free.
These courses, the Tecnodentalsmart courses , will be organized by the dental associations ANTLO – National Association of Dental Laboratory Owners, CIOD – Italian College of Dental Technicians, CNA SNO – Dental Technicians, Federodontotecnica, ORTEC – Italian Association of Orthodontist Technicians, SICED – Italian Society of Dental Ceramics and Dental Labor, the same ones that collaborate in the realization of Tecnodental Forum and that will have full autonomy in the choice of topics and speakers.
As pointed out by Oliviero Turillazzi, creator and promoter of this new congress approach, who has already been charged by UNIDI to organize Tecnodental Forum, “the fragmentation of work in laboratories has led technicians to lose stimuli to deepen the knowledge of our work. This first experiment of a different congress might raise perplexities and doubts, but it is through such occasions that unity is created in the dental category and that the participation of colleagues is experienced, the first step in giving a unique identity to dental work.”