The Common Education Curriculum (CEC) for European Dental Hygienist's – Update and development

In order to harmonize the education of dental hygienists in Europe the European Dental Hygienists Federation (EDHF) started, in 2016, to develop a Common Education Curriculum (CEC) for dental hygienists.

The CEC demonstrates the importance and role of dental hygienists in society in order to establish the education and profession of dental hygienists. The CEC for Dental Hygiene provides a standardised curriculum approach that reflects best academic practice for European dental hygiene education. The CEC was published in 2020 in the European Journal for Dental Education in Europe and EDHF is happy to see that this document has been disseminated widely as it defines a standard framework for dental hygienist education, giving universities and other providers of dental hygiene training a benchmark from which to tailor their programs in line with local demands, regulations and aspirations. The CEC is structured in an Introduction paper followed by four domain papers:

1. Professionalism,
2. Safe and effective Clinical Practice,
3. Patient centred care,
4. Oral Health in society.

The EDHF´s intention now is to make sure that the CEC is kept updated and meets the demands and developments in modern education such as outcome measures and evaluation, both related to teaching methods and usefulness in practice as well as developments in society. The dental hygienists CEC must keep up with the increasing awareness of oral health impact on general health, and vice versa, and increase emphasis on public health. The dental hygienist role in “teaching the teachers” in environments such as hospitals, schools, social care and public health also needs to be more emphasis in the CEC.

The present CEC position papers on the four domains outlines the areas of competence and learning outcomes. EDHF now acknowledge a need to also include a broader approach to sustainability in oral health care. The importance of preventive oral health care has in recent years been very much noticed by stakeholders such as WHO in the Resolution and Action Plans on oral health and in the UN global goals for sustainability.

For a first SIG on this topic EDHF likes to meet stakeholders from dental hygiene and dentist programmes across Europe with the purpose to gather ideas, knowledge and visions on how to develop the four domains in order to reach the aspirations above. The EDHF will set up a taskforce who will start planning for an update of the CEC in the beginning of 2023. The taskforce will start with gathering curriculums and documentation on educational methods - theoretical and clinical training and how this is evaluated.