Preventive coach mentoring for dental professionals

The dental profession entails significant mental, emotional, and professional demands that affect the entire oral healthcare team. Traditional mentoring or coaching is reactive, typically initiated only when challenges such as stress, burnout, or performance concerns arise. This paper proposes ‘preventive coach mentoring' as a proactive, person-focused approach that integrates mentoring and coaching principles to support wellbeing, resilience, reflective practice, and career development. This article reviews relevant literature, outlines a definition and framework for preventive coach mentoring, and proposes a pilot roadmap to embed coach mentoring across the oral healthcare team. It also acknowledges potential challenges, including resource limitations, the need for coach mentor training, and culture change. Rather than delaying adoption until definitive evidence is available, a gradual approach involving pilot schemes and evaluation is advocated.