The Graduating European Dentist Curriculum Framework: A 7-Year Review

Abstract

By its very nature, the Association for Dental Education in Europe (ADEE) is an international voice of dental education, representing dental schools throughout Europe since 1975. The concept of converging and harmonising Oral Health Professional (OHP) education across Europe is at the heart of ADEE's mission and has led to the publication of a number of consensus documents that have become recognised benchmarks for institutions and regulatory bodies across the world. ADEE is also ideally positioned, through regional representation, to engage with multiple European and wider global stakeholders. The pan-European taskforce approach used by ADEE is supported by the recognition that similar social partnerships (involving a wide range of stakeholders) have been shown to increase the validity of curricula, facilitate the transition of students to a vocational work environment, and to help students develop into proficient and effective practitioners [1, 2].

Whilst the Profiles and Competences project, which provided a profile of the competences that a newly graduated dentist should be able to demonstrate, was the most popular in isolation, all three publications have proved instrumental in shaping the delivery of dental education across Europe [3-5]. The popularity and influence of the DentEd project were demonstrated by the number of downloads and citations that have taken place, and the documents have been used by many schools, educational establishments and professional organisations globally, to support the development and/or benchmarking of undergraduate dental curricula.

Due to the broad interpretation of ‘competences’, authors, organisations, institutions, regulators and societies gradually shifted towards a ‘Learning Outcomes’ approach. As such, in 2015 a new taskforce was established to revisit, reconsider and accordingly revise the content, and the ideologies, that should underpin a modern European dental curriculum.

In 2017, a new suite of five curriculum papers was published, collectively titled The Graduating European Dentist (GED). The initial introductory paper provided context and rationale for the learning-outcomes-based approach. This paper is, at the time of publication, the third most-cited paper within the European Journal of Dental Education (EJDE). Four of the papers mirrored the new curriculum domains; and in turn, each was defined by areas of ‘Major Competence’ (Appendix) and provided a basis from which graduates could build confidence and competence towards becoming independent practitioners, who accept the importance of continuing professional development throughout their career. The paper that focuses on methods of Teaching, Learning and Assessment is, at the time of print, the sixth most-accessed paper within the European Journal of Dental Education. The papers, and their citations, are listed in Table 1.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.