Number one spot for Irish dental student

A Queen’s University final year dental student has been ranked number one in the National Dental Foundation Training assessment procedure in the UK.

Leonard Maguire, from Dungannon, has been ranked first among more than 1,200 final year dental students from across the UK’s 16 dental schools and from dental schools in Europe who were assessed during this year’s Foundation Training recruitment process.

Half of the final year dental students at Queen’s University were also ranked in the top 20%.

Leonard said: ‘I am really pleased to have been ranked number one in the UK in the recent Dental Foundation Training recruitment process. The teaching, training and continued support I received at Queen’s means that I feel well equipped for the workplace.’

Last year’s highest ranking student in the UK was also another Queen’s dental student, Conan Mackle, from Derry.

Professor Donald Burden, director of the Centre for Dentistry at Queen’s, said: ‘We are delighted that for the second year in a row a Queen’s dental student has been ranked first in the UK and that more than half our students are in the top twenty per cent.

‘These results reflect not only the hard work and commitment of our students but also the high quality of teaching delivered by the dental teaching team.’

The Dental Foundation Training procedure assesses students in their final year of study using professional, clinical and management scenarios and a situational judgement test, before being ranked according to their performance in those areas.

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