Miss Sarah Murray, MBE, MA, Dip DH, Dip DT, SFHEA, FFDT (RCS Ed)

Profile

Sarah graduated as both a dental hygienist and dental therapist and gained varied clinical experience in both hospital and general dental practice before returning to Queen Mary as a tutor on a part time basis. Sarah was appointed as Programme Lead for the Diploma in Dental Hygiene and Therapy in 1997 and developed the BSc in Oral Health in 2019 that built upon the success of the Diploma programme, who had its last cohort graduate in 2021. Sarah also led and taught on the popular distance-learning Certificate in Oral Health Education for many years.

Sarah is a proactive dental therapist and has a substantial national profile, and works to influence the higher education agenda and the national profile for both dental hygienists and dental therapists. These include working with the University of Essex, as part of the Queen Mary academic partnership, to develop a portfolio of dental undergraduate (FdSc and BSc) programmes (2007-2017). She has also validated many programmes as a General Dental Council Inspector (2005-2017) within the UK, and working with other agencies internationally. She has held the position of Chair of the Directors Group for Dental Hygiene and Therapy, that included membership of Dental Schools Council (2018-2021). Sarah sits on the Editorial Board of the renowned British Dental Journal and has also held various roles within the British Society of Dental Hygiene and Therapy, cumulating as Honorary Secretary (2018-2021).

Sarah has many years of experience of teaching dental hygienists and dental therapists and this has been recognised with being awarded Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), and Fellow of the Faculty of Dental Trainers (FDTFEd, RCS Ed) in 2020. Sarah has received a number of awards over her career and was recognised in the Queens New Year Honours list in 2017, for services to oral health. She received MBE her insignia from Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace in February 2018.

Centre: Dental Public Health and Primary Care

Teaching

Teaching

Academic Lead Year 1 BSc in Oral Health

Co-Lead for Professionalism, Teamwork and Social Responsibility (PTSR) theme

Sarah has extensive experience of teaching all years of BDS and BSc students that includes the development and delivery of lectures/seminars, lab based clinical sessions as well as the supervision of student led clinics with patients.  Sarah is involved in leading and assessing students across all years of the BDS and BSc programmes. She is the Year 1 BSc Academic Lead, a personal tutor and an academic advisor.

Sarah is a joint Theme Lead for the BDS and BSc curricula co-leading on Professionalism, Teamwork and Social Responsibility (PTSR). This enables dental education to be delivered in a truly integrated fashion, fostering shared teaching, learning and assessment with all future members of the dental team, so that a unique understanding of roles, skills and teamworking through skill-mix, is understood.

External examiner:

• University of Bristol BSc Dental Hygiene and Therapy
• University of Kent MSc Advanced and Specialist Healthcare (Applied Dental Professional Practice)

Research

Research Interests:

Sarah's current area of research at QMUL is exploring the role social responsibility plays within the undergraduate curriculum. The most recent research was presented at the International Symposium on Dental Hygiene in Brisbane, Australia in 2019; an exploration using a mixed methods approach, considered the opportunities UK dental hygiene and dental therapy students are provided with to foster social responsibility activity as an undergraduate student, and how these experiences shaped their learning.

Sarah supports students involved in Barts Community Smiles, a student led initiative developed through Barts and The London Student Association (BLSA), to raise awareness of oral health and deliver basic oral health promotion in community and school settings, since their inception in 2018. Previously, Sarah has been successful in being awarded a number of research grants which have centred around the role Dental Care Professionals play in prevention.

Publications

Murray S & Chana B (2012) Preventive Dentistry In S Noble Ed (2012) Clinical Textbook of Dental Hygiene & Therapy. Wiley Blackwell. Chapter 11