Download University of Aberdeen Dental School

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
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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.
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