O‐Health‐Edu : A viewpoint into the current state of oral health professional education in Europe: Part 2: Curriculum structure, facilities, staffing and quality assurance

Jonathan Dixon (1) , Stephanie Tubert-Jeannin (2, 3) , Julia Davies (4) , Maria van Harten (5, 6) , Valerie Roger-Leroi (2) , Sibylle Vital (7) , Corrado Paganelli (8) , Ilze Akota (9) , Maria Cristina Manzanares-Cespedes (10) , Denis Murphy (6) , Gabor Gerber (11) , Barry Quinn (6, 12) , James Field (13)

1 University of Sheffield [Sheffield]
2 CROC - Centre de Recherche en Odontologie Clinique
3 CHU Estaing [Clermont-Ferrand]
4 Malmö Högskola = Malmö University
5 Trinity College Dublin
6 Association for Dental Education in Europe, Dublin, Ireland.
7 UPCité - Université Paris Cité
8 UniBs - Università degli Studi di Brescia = University of Brescia
9 RSU - Riga Stradins University
10 UB - Universitat de Barcelona
11 Semmelweis Egyetem, Budapest
12 University of Liverpool
13 Cardiff University

Introduction Oral health professional (OHP) education is likely to vary across Europe in accordance with an EU directive that is open to broad interpretation. It is not clear how OHP curricula are structured or delivered across Europe. The objectives of Part 2 of this paper series are: (i) to provide an overview of common practices in curriculum structure, the availability of facilities, staffing (faculty) and quality assurance processes and (ii) to consider how the existing programme structures align to stakeholder guidance documents. Methods A total of 27 questions from a 91‐item questionnaire were used for this manuscript. The questionnaire was developed following the Delphi method to establish consensus from a group of experts. Members of the research team and colleagues from other countries in Europe completed a multi‐step piloting process. An online data hub was created to allow the respondents to be data controllers and respond to the questionnaire. ADEE member schools ( n = 144) were invited to provide data. Results Totally, 71 institutions from 25 European countries provided data between June 2021 and April 2023, which represents a response rate of 49.3% of ADEE members. Data on curriculum approaches, teaching methods, integration of topics of interest, clinical education, staff–student ratios, access to facilities and new technologies, teaching staff (faculty) and quality assurance processes are presented for Primary Dental Degree Programmes. Conclusion To the best of our knowledge, this series of papers are the first attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of OHP education in Europe. Results showed that the majority of European dental programmes are engaged in providing innovative and scientifically grounded education in order to develop quality future OHPs. Nevertheless, significant variability in the delivery of clinical education across the European OHP schools was notable in this dataset. A comprehensive view of the state of OHP education in Europe is not yet available but the O‐Health‐Edu data hub provides a means for all education providers in Europe to contribute data to reach this goal. It is anticipated that the data hub will be updated and built upon over time to continually establish a clearer picture of the state of OHP education in Europe.

Mots clés: dental education; dental hygienists; Europe; oral health professionals; Survey

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Jonathan Dixon, Stephanie Tubert-Jeannin, Julia Davies, Maria van Harten, Valerie Roger-Leroi, et al.. O‐Health‐Edu : A viewpoint into the current state of oral health professional education in Europe: Part 2: Curriculum structure, facilities, staffing and quality assurance. European Journal of Dental Education, 2024, ⟨10.1111/eje.12987⟩. ⟨hal-04489389⟩