Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
PAPER E2 LEARNING & TEACHING COMMITTEE: MEETING OF 12 MAY 2008 University of Aberdeen Dental School Proposed Curriculum Introduction A new graduate-entry dental school with an intake of 15 students and 20 per year thereafter is planned for Aberdeen in September 2008. Students will undertake a four-year degree programme designed to meet the requirements of the General Dental Council (GDC) as outlined in ‘The First Five Years’. Approval of the curriculum will be required from the GDC as the regulatory authority of the dental profession and dental education within the UK. Currently the GDC requires that newly-qualified dentists are capable of independent clinical practice on graduation, so it is essential that all aspects of dentistry are covered to sufficient breadth and depth in the proposed curriculum. It is therefore anticipated that entry requirements will normally be a 2:1 Honours degree in a biomedical or medical science(s) or equivalent. Initially only home/EU students will be eligible for admissions. Admitting students with a background in the (biomedical or medical) sciences will allow teaching of basic sciences to be compressed, thereby allowing an increased focus on dental sciences from the start. It is not intended, however, to preclude graduates from other disciplines entirely, as an appropriate level of science knowledge and understanding could be delivered through an access course prior to joining the dental programme. Curriculum The Aberdeen dental curriculum will be a four-year programme, based around a series of themes which will be horizontally and vertically integrated throughout the course. Clinical work will also be introduced early to maximise the clinical experience gained. The themes, which will encompass all aspects of delivering dental care, will be: General health and disease This will cover the normal structure and function of the body (some prior knowledge of the biomedical and medical sciences will be assumed so this element can be condensed compared with a 5-year programme) before moving on to consider abnormal structure and function and disease. The potential implications of a patient’s medical history, disease and drug metabolism/interactions for dental care will be covered. The oral manifestation of certain systemic diseases will also be considered. Teaching will particularly focus on the dental relevance of the topics covered, i.e. it cannot be taken from a medical curriculum without significant alteration. General health and disease will be introduced in Year 1 and will continue throughout Years 2 and 3. Dental health and disease This will cover the basic dental sciences, including dental anatomy, oral biology and physiology, oral pathology, oral microbiology etc, and the aetiology, presentation, prevention and management of the full range of dental/oral disease. The most common endemic oral diseases (caries and periodontal disease) will be covered 1 throughout Year 1, with other topics covering the full range of disease introduced in the subsequent years. Patient care This will cover the clinical care of patients. Integrated clinically related activities (ICRAs) will be introduced in Year 1 to introduce students to the clinical environment. They will also begin the introductory clinical skills course, covering the treatment of simple periodontal disease and caries management. Patient contact will be introduced in Semester 2 with observation and simple preventive advice. Students will begin their own patient care in Semester 3 with simple restorative procedures. Their clinical experience will then continue throughout the remainder of the curriculum with further clinical skills courses to advance their clinical skills, and attachments to clinics in the full range of dental disciplines. In Year 4, the focus will be on holistic patient care, when students will be responsible for all aspects of their patients’ dental care. Throughout this theme, there will be an emphasis on working as part of the dental team, with the roles of the other dental care professionals being explored. Behavioural science and dental public health This will cover strategies for communicating effectively with patients. This will be introduced in Year 1 to support students’ first contact with patients. Modification of these strategies for communicating with different patient groups will be introduced later in the curriculum as these different groups are considered. Behavioural techniques for the management of dental anxiety will also be covered. Dental public health will be introduced in Year 2, continuing throughout the remainder of the curriculum, and will cover the scope of dental public health, covering both interventions with individual patients and population groups, epidemiology, statistics, evaluating evidence, role of the dental public health consultant, links between dental health/disease and social deprivation etc. Law and ethics/professionalism This will cover the legal aspects of dental practice, e.g. confidentiality, consent, maintaining accurate patient records etc, as well as fostering appropriate professional attitudes and behaviour. This will be introduced in Semester 1 of Year 1 with consideration of the role of the dental professional. The basic principles of legal and ethical practice will be covered in Semester 2 to support introduction to patient contact. Assessment of professionalism will begin in Semester 2, when exposure to the clinical environment is introduced, and will continue throughout the remainder of the curriculum. This theme will be built on in the subsequent years with consideration of issues specific to the patient groups being studied, e.g. consent for treatment of children or patients with special needs, and teaching will be reviewed in Year 4 with the consideration of more complex teaching scenarios. The need for continuing professional development will also be stressed. Decontamination/infection control This will cover the theoretical and practical teaching of the need for and process of decontamination and infection control. This will be introduced in Semester 1 of Year 2 1 with basic principles to support the ICRAs and introductory clinical skills course. Practical demonstration and experience of decontamination in a local decontamination unit (LDU) will be taught and assessed in Semester 2 and this will be re-assessed in each subsequent year of the curriculum. The application of infection control/decontamination in the clinical setting will be assessed throughout clinical attachments as part of the assessment of professionalism. In addition to being organised around themes, teaching will also be patient centred. In Year 1 teaching will focus on perhaps the least challenging patient group, the ‘normal’ dentate adult patient. As the students consolidate their clinical skills and confidence in caring for patients, other groups will be considered as detailed below, with appropriate clinical attachments introduced to provide supporting clinical experience: Year 2 Semester 1 The child patient Year 2 Semester 2 The older patient Year 3 Semester 1 The anxious patient Year 3 Semester 2 The patient with special needs As this will be a graduate entry programme, teaching strategies designed to meet the needs of a more mature student group with previous experience of a university education will be employed. There will be a focus on more independent and reflective learning, supported by the use of e-learning to its full potential. This may also help overcome some of the possible logistical difficulties, in the early stages of the programme, of this student group being remote from Dundee and some specialist teaching perhaps not being available in Aberdeen. Students will develop an extensive e-portfolio to collect evidence of their learning and experience, which will form part of their formative and summative assessment. 3