Curriculum Pit Stop

Posted on: 20 August 2020 by Emily Wilson in Centennial Curriculum

As the academic year has ended we have entered a brief (and very welcome) period of rest, reflection and refresh ahead of 2020/21. A huge amount has been achieved this year, under trying circumstances, however, while 2019/20 has ended successfully, we still have plenty to achieve in the years ahead.

Centennial Curriculum - Vision 

With our first year of the new BDS and BSc Dental Therapy programmes complete, we wanted to highlight the aims of the Centennial Curriculum:

• Support learning through educational opportunities aligned to explicit learning outcomes and designed to facilitate the integration of knowledge and skills.
• Support learning through assessments that are appropriately sophisticated so as to accurately inform and support the professional development of each individual learner, whilst at the same time ensuring safe and effective practice.
• Develop dental professionals with real-world team working and leadership skills, able to adapt to meet changing population oral health needs and models of care delivery.
• Produce dental professionals capable of providing evidence-based holistic patient management.
• Produce dental professionals able to utilise feedback, reflect on their performance, and identify and address their learning needs throughout their practicing lifetime.

While it may be too early to confidently claim that we have met all of these aims (our students will only be progressing into year two in September, and 2019/20 has hardly been the year we expected), we have seen a number of positive outcomes this year which bode well for the future of this curriculum. One such outcome is that the integrated structure of the curriculum has enabled our students to become a more cohesive group, who learn, socialise and live together regardless of their career path. Performance across the cohort this year has equally reflected this with similar levels of attainment across both cohorts. 

CLC2 (Collaborative Learning Core 2)

September will soon be here and we will be launching the second year of our new curriculum. Over three different blog posts (of which this is the second), we will introduce you to the different components that make up CLC2. This time it's the turn of Integrated Skills Development and Patient Care Provision:

In the simulated environment, the Integrated Skills Development component will allow students to expand their treatment skills to include much of the scope of practice of a Dental Therapist, including the basic restoration of teeth in adults and children, removal of sub-gingival deposits, delivery of local anesthesia, routine radiographic examinations and extraction of erupted primary teeth. Students will be able to transfer these skills onto patient clinics once they have satisfied the Clinical Safety Panel that they are safe to progress. Due to their expanded treatment skills, treatment in the Patient Care Provision component will take place on our Paediatric clinics as well as our adult Restorative clinics. 

Share your thoughts 

Please contact Emily Wilson, the Project Officer, to discuss the Centennial Curriculum and any suggestions for this blog.