The founders of BSSPD were senior academics including Heads of Departments and Deans of Schools, at the forefront of research, innovation and the teaching of prosthetic dentistry. As witnessed by recent conference themes, and driven by changing patterns of dental disease and technology innovation, the society has continued to develop and grow from those early days. However there is a preconceived idea from those outside the society that it continues to focus only on complete dentures and the academic study thereof, perpetuated by the name of the society which retains the words 'study' and 'prosthetic'.

As you know for some time now there has been concern over the membership numbers and the lack of members from general and specialist primary care practice.

This has been discussed at length by council who are both acutely aware of the advantage of familiarity of the BSSPD 'brand' and the traditions associated with it, as well as the potential disadvantages and advantages of changing the name in order to reflect the positive changes taking place within the Society. Altered conference formats, the formation of an education group, improved newsletters, local and more frequent CPD activity, and the new web page are just some of the developments that have helped to bring the society into the twenty first century and have encouraged new members from all 'walks' of specialist restorative practice.
The BSSPD council firmly believe that BSSPD need to build on these developments. To survive and grow a further change is required so that prospective members, whilst still recognising us for our traditional qualities, understand what our purpose is. To that effect the Council wish to propose that we adopt and promote 'BSSPD' as the name of our society, but we realign the words represented by that name to embody our vision for encouraging membership from the wider dental community who share our interests.

Following further discussions with the membership over the last 18 months or so

The proposal to be put to the membership at the EGM (5:15pm 11th November 2011; Pan-Society Conference) is that the Society change its name to ;

‘British Society of Prosthodontics'

This will require a change in the Society's constitution - the updated proposed constitution document is available here for members to review.

Chris Butterworth
President 2011-2012 - on behalf of the BSSPD Council