Celebrating Pet Dental Health Awareness Month with Jonathan Frost
In celebration of Pet Dental Health Awareness Month, we’re speaking to members of our alumni community to raise awareness of the importance of oral health for our animal companions.
We spoke to Jonathan Frost (BVSc 2013), a dedicated Veterinary Dentist with a keen interest in educating and helping primary care vets improve their dentistry. He is experienced in orthodontics and minimally invasive maxillofacial surgery, and has a particular interest in root canal therapy.
Do you have any memories from your time as School of Veterinary Science student at Liverpool to share?
I loved my time at Liverpool, but I did struggle. There were some people in my year group who flew through their exams with ease, this was not me. I had to retake my first year and was a chronic exam resitter, but it really taught me how to work hard which has carried on to my professional career.
Did anyone inspire you when you were a student?
I honestly do not think I would have graduated without the support of Professor Kieron Salmon and Dr Avril Senior. They were an incredible moral support and really helped me focus and direct my learning into a format that was understandable for me!
Tell us about your career. How did you become interested in dentistry?
As a new grad in my first job, I didn’t get much of a choice in which procedures to do, and I was often assigned the dental cases as nobody else wanted them! I didn’t really know what I was doing and wasn’t having much fun. I realised that it wasn’t going to get better on its own, so I emailed a European Specialist in veterinary dentistry, Dr Rachel Perry, who very kindly let me see practice with her. From that point on I was hooked! The more I learnt, the easier surgeries became, and my passion became saving teeth rather than extracting them.
In 2020 I started an alternate pathway residency with the European Veterinary Dental College and focused on veterinary dentistry full-time. In 2023 I started my own business, Frost Referrals, as a peripatetic veterinary dentist where I travel around the South of England providing in-house advanced dentistry to local practices, as well as providing in-house continued professional development (CPD) to practices who want to improve the quality of their dentistry.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
Veterinary Dentistry is a rapidly growing field and there is a lot of fantastic CPD available, as well as practical training to improve your surgical skills will make a huge amount of difference. I highly recommend ESAVS (European School of Advanced Veterinary Studies) as well as CentralCPD and Improve International. There are several excellent courses on offer at the IM3 training facilities near Dublin as well, which is well worth a visit.
If you have a strong interest in veterinary dentistry, it is worth joining the BVDA (British Veterinary Dental Association), which has a very strong community on Facebook with lots of helpful advice from very experienced veterinary dentists. The BVDA has its annual congress in April in London.
What is your top tip for your fellow alumni this Pet Dental Health Month?
Dental radiographs are the biggest game-changer! Without good quality images, you have no idea what pathology is occurring, and you can easily miss issues which could cause your patients problems in the future.
Sharp instruments will make a big difference to the speed of your surgical extractions and your ability to close your extraction sites afterwards. IM3 has a great instrument sharpening guide online.
How can alumni keep up with what you're doing?
I am contactable via my website (www.frostdentalvet.com) and students and alumni are more than welcome to drop me a message with any questions about dentistry or tricky cases they want advice on. I love talking teeth! I also have a dentistry-based Instagram account (@frostdentalvet) for those who would like to follow along.
Thank you, Jonathan, for helping us celebration Pet Dental Health Awareness Month. If you’d like to share your own veterinary career journey or professional reflections with the University of Liverpool Veterinary Alumni Association, we’d love to hear from you via ulvaa@liverpool.ac.uk.