“The Graduating European Dentist” specifically stresses the importance of Patient‐Centred Care. This approach is becoming increasingly prominent within the literature and within policy documents and is defined by the Institute of Medicine (2011) as “Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”
In addition to treating individual patients, a Dentist must be able to focus on promoting health, monitoring interventions and implementing effective strategies of care at community and population levels. This necessarily involves understanding population demography and health trends, engaging with health policy and promoting health.
A Dentist must also understand population demography and health trends, in the context of the healthcare system, or systems, within which they work.
Recognising that most of dentistry is provided in a primary dental care setting, where Dentists practise as members of teams in healthcare systems, it is vitally important that Dentists:
- take account of the wider context within which they practise
- integrate effectively with society
- advocate for general and oral health, and system change
The undergraduate curriculum should reflect the importance of these principles and provide students with the opportunity to engage outside of dental settings. To understand populations and their health, new graduates must understand demographic changes and trends in oral/general health and society, which have major implications for their future patient base and care provision. Additionally, it is important to be aware of wider contextual influences: social, political, economic and environmental and their influence on populations and the health workforce. Dentists must be capable of promoting the general and oral health of their community, and that of the wider population.
This population health aspect of the dental undergraduate curriculum is often labelled “Community Dental Health,” “Dental Public Health” or “Preventive Dentistry.” This may, in turn, be delivered by a range of dental specialties such as (but not exclusively) Restorative Dentistry, Special Care Dentistry, Periodontics, Endodontics, Prosthodontics, Gerodontology, Paediatric Dentistry, Oral Medicine, Oral Surgery and Orthodontics.
Five competences have been identified by the GED that a graduating european dentsits must demonstrate.
