Professional standards in dental education.

The importance of quality-assured teaching development is recognised within the new 'Graduating European Dentist' curriculum. In addition, educators within higher education are now increasingly required to demonstrate good standing in terms of education and educating their profession. Standards and expectations exist within the discipline of medicine, but there is little in the way of a general professional standards document for dental education that accounts for the multitude of training and teaching development pathways available to the wider dental team.

Experiences of the challenges of undertaking an orthodontic needs assessment within the National Health Service in England.

The purpose of undertaking Orthodontic (Oral Health) Needs Assessment is to identify unmet healthcare need in a systematic way. The NHS Five Year Forward View set out a clear direction for the NHS in 2014, showing why change is needed and what it will look like. It has been recognised that the health needs and personal preferences of individuals are continuously adapting; therefore, orthodontic services are required to meet this changing environment.

Interprofessional Education in an Orthodontic Outreach Training Centre.

Interprofessional education (IPE) describes those occasions when students from two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. In the UK, orthodontic treatment is now delivered by a highly skilled team. Historically, education and training for orthodontic team members has been delivered 'uniprofessionally' in secondary care hospital settings, despite 96% of dental care, including orthodontics, being delivered in primary care.

Education for the dental team: make your practice a centre of learning excellence.

This paper discusses the future educational needs of the changing dental team, the potential for new institutions and teachers to deliver and assess that education, including outreach-based teaching and learning, and interchangeability of educational credits between institutions. The author's opinion is that primary care practices can become 'centres of learning' where all members of the dental team can interact to teach and learn together at the same time. The development of a career pathway for dental care professionals (DCPs), a more unified pan-Europe approach to integrated dental education and the development of further roles for senior dental students are proposed.