Designing a dental curriculum for the twenty-first century

Abstract

A healthcare curriculum must be up-to-date, fit for purpose and relevant to the population it serves wherever that population might be, worldwide. In this paper we describe the rationale for the design and implementation of a curriculum in a new dental school in UK. We assessed the general and dental health needs of our local population and proposed a set of core skills our dentists will need on graduation and in the future. This core learning falls into three domains of learning. The psychomotor domain covers the learning of technical skills for which we use the shorthand 'hands'. The affective domain covers empathy and behaviour management, that is the 'heart'; and the cognitive domain including critical thinking, the 'head'. The three domains require different ways of learning but all are delivered in context in an integrated, case-based spiralling curriculum building in complexity year on year. Students treat patients from half way through year 1, which helps them appreciate the relevance of the 'hands', 'heart' and 'head' of dentistry as they begin to build their knowledge and experience.

First‐year oral health and dentistry student perceptions of future professional work

“…When both groups highlighted patient emotion and behaviour as a source of difficulty, BOH student responses were generally compassionate and empathetic, whilst BDS students tended to portray patient emotion and behaviour as problematic or a difficulty to be 'managed'. (26) Population-level/public health considerations (17) Population-level/public health considerations (20) Restorative tasks (16) Communication (19) Self-management (12) Teamwork (5) Communication (11) Patient emotion and behaviour (4) Patient emotion and behaviour (6) Self-management (2) Teamwork (4) Disease prevention/monitoring (1) Disease prevention/monitoring (3) Q2 3 (An everyday situation that would be difficult to deal with)…”

“…and having an adequate level of knowledge. Some students' question two self-management concerns also reflected a more general concern with patient well-being, 2 Restorative tasks (29) Restorative tasks (24) Patient-related concerns (28) Communication (16) Communication (19) Self-management (13) Self-management (13) Patient emotion and behaviour and population-level/public health considerations (7) Disease prevention/monitoring and population-level/public health considerations (10) Teamwork (5) Patient emotion and behaviour (4) Disease prevention/monitoring (3) Teamwork (1) Q2 3 (An everyday situation that would be difficult to deal with)…”

Impact of early clinical exposure on the learning experience of undergraduate dental students

“…Peninsula Dental School is one of the first schools based in community settings in the United Kingdom . The students gain clinical exposure to patients after the first 6 months of the course, and their clinical exposure increases progressively each year.…”

Research training in dental undergraduate curriculum in Chile.

“…In general terms, there is a clear recommendation to include a minimum amount of biomedical research training in undergraduate programs 5 , which is reflected in different forms in the formal curriculum depending on each country and institution [15][16][17][18] . Special programs to support additional or dual integrated training as a researcher-clinician must be added like in the United States and other developed countries [19][20][21][22] .…”