DT News - UK - University successfully integrates teaching of hygiene therapists with dentists

Dental Tribune UK

Tue. 22 January 2019

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PLYMOUTH, UK: In dental practices, pre-established attitudes and hierarchies can often result in each member of a dental team having specific and separate roles and responsibilities. A new study has highlighted how dental hygiene therapy and dental students can be taught alongside one another successfully, potentially encouraging greater teamwork from earlier on in their careers.

The study looks at a model of teaching introduced by the Peninsula Dental School at the University of Plymouth, which integrated its Dental Hygiene Therapy (DHT) and Dental Surgery (DS) undergraduate degree programmes. Throughout their degrees, students from both programmes are taught together in classes designed to foster a positive interprofessional culture.

Thus far, the results of the integrated programme have been promising. Since its inception in 2014, every student in the DHT programme has passed their final year and subsequently found employment. In addition, the integrated programme has received a sufficiency award from the General Dental Council.

Clare McIlwaine, a lecturer in Oral Health Sciences at the Peninsula Dental School, led the team of academics who conducted the study. “To meet the challenges of an ageing population with increasingly complex treatment needs, clinicians are expected to provide patient-centred care in a collaborative, interdisciplinary team environment, which has seen dental hygiene therapists take on a broader range of treatments,” she explained.

“However, there may be still misconceptions within both professions about what the other does. In order to tackle these issues in practice, they must be tackled at the earliest stage of their careers—at undergraduate level—and that’s one of the reasons we developed the programmes as we have,” she continued.

“This paper offers preliminary evidence that an integrated DS-DHT programme can be successful. This course is in its infancy and we now aspire to move forward with further studies to provide qualitative and quantitative data to assess and validate the success of our integrated education model, as well as career pathways beyond the first year after graduation. It describes our vision and its relevance for the future of interprofessional dental education.”

The study, titled “A novel, integrated curriculum for dental hygiene therapists and dentists”, was published online in the British Dental Journal on 11 Jan. 2019 and is available here.

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