Putting some shine into dental education
M. MADAN MOHAN
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The Continuing Medical Education programme should be more meaningful, relevant and compulsory. And it is time to take a closer look at the professional competence of practising dental surgeons.
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DIVERSIFICATION AND UPGRADATION: Is dental education outdated, requiring a complete revamp of curriculum?.
It is high time the dental education is revamped to meet the changing needs of the contemporary society, and meet the challenges of globalisation, according to Dr. C. Bhasker Rao, who has for two terms served as the Vice President of the Dental Council of India and has again been nominated to the Dental Council of India for the third time in a row and is all poised to take over the post for the third time.
At 62, Dr. Bhasker Rao has been one of the senior-most of the teachers with around three decades experience in the field. He has varied experience in the realm of research, planning and administration of the dental courses and dental colleges in the country. He has been heading the S D M College of Dental Sciences, one of the two colleges in the country, which have received the NAAC accreditation ever since it was started. He has had varied national and international experience.
Dr Bhasker Rao, who did his MDS in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, did his FDSRCPS in Glasgow UK in 1997, and has a number of international awards to his credit. He has been associated with a number of institutions including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow, Arab Medical University, Benghazi Libya, the University Grants Commission, Sri Ramachandra Deemed University Chennai, B P Koirala Institute of Medical Sciences, Nepal, besides the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences Bangalore Dr. Bhasker Rao says that the curriculum of the dental education has remained more or less unchanged for the past fifty years. "It only means that the present day students, are reading what I had read in my college, and my teachers had read during their student days''.
The Dental Council he says has revised the curriculum for BDS and submitted the same to the Union Ministry of Health and has been waiting to be notified for the past three years, before it could be adopted by the dental colleges all over the country.
The revised curriculum provides for increasing the duration of the course from 4+1 year to 4 1/2 + 1 years. This is because of the introduction of the several new subjects like Aesthetic Dentistry, Forensic Dentistry and Implantology, Human Behaviour. Barring Kerala, where an amendment to the university act has been made to usher in 4 1/2 +1 year pattern, all others are following the existing pattern including Karnataka.
The changes proposed have also been necessitated because of the changing trends in Indian dentistry, about which he had presented a paper in the FDI Annual World Congress held in New Delhi last year, says Dr. Rao. In India he says dental education has moved away from the government sector to the private sector, with around 155 of the 190 colleges in the country coming under the private sector. A subtle gender change is also taking place, with more and more girls preferring dental education. And the image of dental medical professionals has also changed a lot. Today the dental clinics have a good interiors and more than one specialist operates under a single roof, with the concept of visiting faculty also coming to stay says Dr Rao.
Full-fledged dentistry could form part of the medical tourism that the country can undertake in the coming days says Dr. Rao.
Barring the BDS and MDS courses "we have not been able to diversify and introduce newer courses at the postgraduate, diploma levels or otherwise'' Dr Bhasker Rao said. For example, there was need for a course in Cosmetic dentistry. "All those who compete at the international level undergo the treatment abroad but we cant offer it in India.'' There is plenty of scope for introducing courses in Human Behaviour, Implantology to meet the needs of society, he says.
As for mushrooming of dental colleges, Dr. Rao says this was basically due to the fact that the starting of the dental colleges was comparatively easier than medical colleges and the difficulties cropped up in the third year of the establishment of the colleges and then the managements start struggling to meet the requirements. The Dental Council of India had started insisting on complying with the requirements of the dental colleges right from the first year itself, on the teaching positions to be filled and the infrastructure to be created.
Dr. Rao is of the view that there has to be a moratorium on the opening of the new dental colleges all over the country except in the North-Eastern States. With over 13,000 students joining the BDS in all and with ten percent of them making to the MDS, the ratio of the dentists to the population for the dentist is quite favorable. Of the 190 dental colleges in the country, Karnataka has the highest concentration of around 46 colleges.
A time has come to take a closer look at the professional competence of the practicing dental surgeons. The Continuing Medical Education programme should be more meaningful, relevant and compulsory. The registration should be made renewable every five years and given only after the candidate has gone periodical reorientation and updating of knowledge, he says.
Dr. Bhasker Rao said the Health Universities, which have been established in the country, should devise the curriculum taking into consideration the challenges of globalisation.
They should take a proactive role, come out of the grove of the traditional approach and be innovative in their approach to education and research.
There was, for example, the need for introducing the `project mode' in the dental curriculum to enable the undergraduate students to take up the project works of relevance to the community.
The dental education can make more strides if some initiative is taken to establish the national institution for dental education or inculcate the research attitude, besides and accreditation of dental colleges, he says.
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