Worldental Daily, Thursday, 30 August 2012

Opinion Thursday, 30 August 2012 T heFDIWorldDentalFederation salutes and strongly supports the World Health Organiza- tion’s ongoing initiative to develop policy guidelines on scaling up and transforming health professional education and training.1 It is also keen to provide advice and input into this WHO process, which in itself is part of an ongoing worldwide reflection on the future of health care and health economics. The FDI, representing nearly one million dentists worldwide, is cur- rently undergoing its own reflections onthefutureofdentalmedicine,con- solidated by the FDI’s highly active participation in public health cam- paigns,mostnotablyitsworkwiththe World Health Professions Alliance in thefieldsofcounterfeitmedicineand, morerecently,noncommunicabledis- eases (NCDs). A ROADMAPFORTHE PROFESSION The NCD campaign, which in- volved high-level advocacy within both the WHO and the UN, has made a significant contribution to the FDI deliberations over the past few months, which have yielded a draft policydocumenttitled“Vision2020”, set to provide a roadmap for the pro- fession during the next decade. In it, education is presented as a multifaceted process, with a whole of society approach, involving the health professional, health authority and patient. The vision comprises a review of current approaches and curricula—although not specifically mentioned, this could be matched by parallel strategies to develop oral health literacy among the teaching profession, in the interests of school health and prevention programmes, aswellasamongmembersofthegen- eralpublic.Itfurthercomprisesanad- vocacy component to emphasise the crucial role of oral health in general health and ensure the appropriate al- location of resources to dental train- ing and education. What is required is a sustainable economic environ- ment to educate, train and retain oral health-careworkersinadequatenum- bers for places and settings where a need has been identified. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES With this in mind, “Vision 2020” places under review the roles and responsibilities of the oral health- care workforce and their educational and training needs, bearing in mind the widely variable and inequitable access to care. It goes without saying that national authorities, with their unique insights into local needs, retain ownership of national proce- dures, standards, and educational requirements and qualifications. In this new collaborative model, the fully trained dentist takes a lead- ership role, supervising a team of assistants,hygienists,therapistsand technicians, as well as primary-care workers, community nurses, and, within certain settings, educators. He/she would also provide adequate training and delegate specific tasks as deemed appropriate. This more collaborative approach to oral health care will be further fos- tered by state-of-the-art information and communication technologies— and mobile technology in particular —which will also improve access to expertknowledgeforall,inurbanand remote areas, in developed and de- veloping countries alike. A RESPONSIVE MODEL This is a dental education model responsive to evolving trends and needs in both oral and systemic health, oriented towards patient care and integrated services, with a focus ontransformativelearningasameans offosteringcriticalthinkingandequip- pingdentistsforteamleadership. The model would ensure absolute compliance with the non-negotiables of the dental profession, in particular quality assurance, asepsis and infec- tion control, as well as pain control and management. To ensure opti- mumcareforpatients,dentistswould retain full responsibility for diag- nosis, treatment and rehabilitation plans, and prescriptions. DENTALEDUCATION Despitethegrowingrecognitionof oral health as an important factor in general health, there is a perceived growing disconnect between dental education and medical education, the former retaining a disproportion- ate focus on restorative care. Vision 2020 calls for a trans-professional perspective in dental education. This would help provide a public health focus, facilitate collaboration with other medical professionals and re- spond to WHO and UN calls for inte- grated disease prevention, notably with regard to NCDs. In addition, the two-way commu- nication between research and clini- cal practice would be greatly facili- tated if all dental medicine faculties performed research—scientific, edu- cational and social—to cultivate a good understanding of research mechanisms, enhance lifelong learn- ing behaviour, skills and attitudes, andwidenperspectives.Itwouldalso play a crucial role in reducing the lapse of time—currently estimated at an average of 17 years—in imple- menting the results of research into daily practice. LOOKINGTOTHE FUTURE Our vision is that by 2020 young dental graduates will benefit from responsive, dynamic and modular curricula whose content will reflect state-of-the-art knowledge and tech- nologies that can be used to provide optimal oral health care and provide learners with extensive critical think- ing and analytical skills as a foun- dation for a career based on lifelong learning and continuing professional development. Furthermore, sustained educa- tional and communication efforts will have greatly improved the effective, rapid translation of research findings into daily practice. State-of-the-art use of information and communi- cation technologies, and of mobile technology in particular, will have fostered a more collaborative ap- proach to oral health care, as well as improved access to expert knowl- edge for all, in urban and remote areas, in developed and developing countries alike. A vision for education in the field of oral health By Dr Orlando Monteiro da Silva, FDI President, and Prof. Denis Bourgeois, Chair of the FDI Development Committee “In this new collaborative model, the fully trained dentist takes a leadership role, supervising a team of assistants, hygienists, therapists and technicians, as well as primary-care workers, community nurses, and, within certain settings, educators.” IProf.DenisBourgeois 06 www.fdiworldental.org IDrOrlandoMonteirodaSilva AD 1 WHO initiative on transformative scale-up ofhealthprofessionaleducation.Intervention Framework.