The purpose of Australian Dental Graduates is "Positively Transforming Dentistry." We believe in creating a better future for dentistry in Australia.

Many people believe the future of dentistry in Australia is bleak. There are increasing numbers of new graduates, increasing corporate involvement in dentistry, increasing health fund involvement in dentistry, increasing numbers of people seeking dental treatment overseas and increasing competition for jobs. We believe the net result of this will be poorer workplace conditions and cultures, less engaged and less fulfilled teams and hence poorer patient care. However, we believe it is not all doom and gloom and we want to communicate this to the next generation of dentists.

At Australian Dental Graduates we love the quote :

"If you look after your team they will look after your customers, it's that simple." Richard Branson.

Australian Dental Graduates was founded by Dr Stephen Dudgeon and Dr Eli Burger of Avenue Dental on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. When we graduated from Dental School we had amazing opportunities and we believe that there are still great opportunities in this extremely rewarding career of dentistry. We wanted to share this message of hope to new dental graduates so we started the Australian Dental Graduate Of The Year Award in 2014. We were overwhelmed by the quality of students graduating dentistry. There were so many great applicants it made it difficult to pick just one. We felt we wanted to do more to support new dental graduates in Australia.

To further support new dental graduates we also started the Australian Dental Graduates Mini Residency. This program consists of 5 free one day lectures and hands on workshops at our training facility in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast spread throughout the first year after graduation. The Mini Residency aims to educate new dental graduates in the foundational skills required to be an outstanding general dentist. This Mini Residency is by invitation only to the top dental graduates that apply for the Australian Dental Graduate Of The Year Award each year.

To further support new graduates in Australia we founded the Australian Dental Graduates Facebook page and Australian Dental Graduates Blog. The focus of the Facebook page and Blog is on our two favourite subjects - leadership and culture. We believe dentistry in Australia needs good leaders to serve our profession moving forwards. We want to aid the next generation of leaders by educating them in leadership and culture.

In 2019 Australian Dental Graduates will be launching Australian Dental Outreach. The aim of this program is to give final year dental students the opportunity to help people in need who would otherwise not have access to dental care in an overseas university setting.

Through the Australian Dental Graduate Of The Year Award, the Avenue Dental Mini Residency in General Practice Dentistry, Australian Dental Graduates Facebook page, Australian Dental Graduates Blog and Australian Dental Outreach program we believe we are working towards our purpose of:

"Positively Transforming Dentistry"

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Ready to take the next step? You can become a contributor to our cause and learn how to positively transform dentistry!