Dr Amit Jilka of Abbey House Dental — with practices in Rugeley, Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent providing dental implants across Staffordshire — co-delivered an advanced one-day implant training course in Crawley alongside Dr Stephen Anderson. The day was hosted for delegates of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School Diploma in Dental Implantology, and was attended and contributed to by Professor Jag Dhadha, Maxillofacial Consultant and Director of the Diploma, and Dr Sami Stagnell, Course Lead.
This blog documents the full day — the speakers, the guest contributors, the topics covered, and what it means for our patients across Staffordshire who choose Abbey House Dental for their implant care.
The day was interactive, visionary and frank — an honest, in-depth conversation about dental implants and how dentists can build a focused, high-end implant practice. The emphasis throughout was on giving patients the very best consultation so they can make properly informed decisions about the long-term treatment that dental implants offer.
This is a course that Dr Jilka and Dr Anderson have delivered a number of times over the years, and each iteration gets sharper. A full cohort of diploma delegates spent the day with both speakers in an intensive, hands-on teaching environment.
Dr Amit Jilka is the Principal Implant Clinician and Clinical Lead at Abbey House Dental, an independent Staffordshire dental group with practices serving Rugeley, Stafford, Stoke-on-Trent and the wider region. From these locations, he provides dental implant treatment for patients across Stafford, Rugeley, Stoke-on-Trent, Cannock, Lichfield and surrounding areas.
Dr Jilka graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2008 and holds BDS, MJDF RCS (Eng), a Diploma in Implantology and Oral Surgery, and a Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring. He has been placing dental implants since 2012, the same year he purchased his first dental practice. Since then, he has helped grow the business from a two-surgery site into one of Staffordshire’s largest independent dental providers, now operating across five sites and delivering multidisciplinary care through structured systems, digital workflows and strong team utilisation.
Alongside his clinical work, Dr Jilka is an established implant trainer, mentor and educator. He helps dentists across the UK develop their skills in dental implantology, IV sedation, sinus lifting, full-arch rehabilitation, consultation design, workflow efficiency and sustainable practice growth. He has developed in-house training academies and structured mentoring pathways, and teaches on and helps coordinate the PGDip Dental Implant Reconstructive Surgery programme at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
Dr Jilka is also the ITI Director for Staffordshire, a member of the Staffordshire Local Dental Committee, and was awarded Best Dentist at the Probe Awards in 2023. His work combines advanced implant dentistry, clinical leadership, mentoring and practice development, with a focus on delivering efficient, patient-centred implant care across Staffordshire.
Dr Stephen Anderson has been placing dental implants for over twelve years. He originally trained alongside Dr Amit Jilka at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, in the Maxillofacial Surgery department. The two have since gone on to become advanced implantologists by different routes, but with a shared philosophy on clinical care.
Dr Anderson owns a dental practice in Stratford-upon-Avon [please confirm location] and also works as a dental associate placing implants elsewhere. He has grown to be placing a significant number of implants each year and is heavily involved in mentoring, training and developing his clinical team. His emphasis is on high-end consultations supported by digital intraoral scanners, CBCT 3D imaging, structured patient communication, clinical photography and safe implant dentistry.
We were honoured to be joined on the day by the two senior figures who lead the diploma itself, both of whom attended and contributed throughout:
Professor Jag Dhadha — Maxillofacial Consultant and Director of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School Diploma in Dental Implantology. Professor Dhadha’s clinical leadership and surgical perspective added significant depth to the day’s discussions, particularly around complex cases and managing complications.
Dr Sami Stagnell — Course Lead for the Brighton and Sussex Diploma in Dental Implantology. Dr Stagnell guided the academic flow of the day and ensured the teaching tied directly into the wider diploma curriculum, giving delegates a coherent learning experience.
The programme was deliberately wide-ranging, covering the full arc of building and running a successful implant practice — from clinician mindset through to clinical workflow, complications and growth.
After registration and refreshments, the day opened with introductions before Dr Stephen Anderson led a session on understanding your motivation as a clinician and the impact this has on implant numbers, case acceptance and finances. Dr Amit Jilka then took delegates through what makes a productive implant consultation — the same principles applied at Abbey House Dental for every implant patient across our Rugeley, Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent practices — a topic expanded on day two of the diploma course.
After the coffee break, the two speakers jointly covered effective communication with patients (including letter workflows), team relationships and improving practice efficiency. Dr Anderson then walked delegates through the implant workflow following case acceptance — the clinical steps from yes to placed implant.
Following lunch, Dr Jilka covered diary management — a deceptively important topic for any growing implant practice. Dr Anderson then tackled dealing with implant complications and failures, an essential subject that many courses avoid. Dr Jilka returned with a whiteboard discussion on sourcing implant patients, followed by simple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for sustainable growth.
After the final coffee break, the day moved into its signature Hot Seat session — a long-form, interactive discussion where delegates put real-world cases and questions directly to both speakers. This is consistently rated as one of the most valuable parts of the day. A final Q&A and feedback round closed the formal teaching, followed by evening refreshments.
The day was kindly sponsored by Straumann — the number one dental implant system in the world — and by Abbey House Dental, Dr Jilka’s Staffordshire group of practices in Rugeley, Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent. All three Abbey House Dental locations exclusively use implants from the Straumann Group, giving our patients across Staffordshire the benefit of decades of clinical research and the most predictable long-term results currently available in implant dentistry.
If you are looking for dental implants in Stafford, Rugeley or Stoke-on-Trent, days like this matter. Dentists who teach other dentists are by definition operating at the top of their field — they are scrutinised, they stay current, and they refine their methods constantly because they have to defend them in front of a room of peers.
When you choose Abbey House Dental for your implant treatment, you are choosing a practice led by a clinician who:
• Trains the next generation of UK implant dentists on a recognised university diploma
• Uses Straumann — the world’s leading dental implant system — across all three Abbey House Dental practices
• Applies the same consultation standards taught on the course to every patient in the practice
• Has three convenient locations across Staffordshire — Rugeley, Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent — so you can choose the practice nearest to you
It is always an honour to spend a day with younger, budding implantologists, and to play a part in training the next generation. A huge thank you to our delegates, to Professor Jag Dhadha and Dr Sami Stagnell for attending and contributing throughout the day, to Dr Stephen Anderson, and to our sponsors Straumann and Abbey House Dental for making the day what it was — we look forward to the next one.
If you are considering dental implants in Stafford, Rugeley, Stoke-on-Trent or anywhere else in Staffordshire, we would be delighted to see you at the Abbey House Dental practice nearest to you. Choose from our locations in Rugeley, Stafford or Stoke-on-Trent.
Call us on 01785 818 037 or book your consultation online.
Abbey House Dental Rugeley — Avondale House, 37 Anson St, Rugeley WS15 2BA
Abbey House Dental Stafford — 9 Abbey Street, Stone, ST15 8PA
Abbey House Dental Stoke-on-Trent — Unit 1, Canal arm festival park, Stoke-on-Trent, St1 5UR
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