Indirect Restorations and Removable Prosthodontics – Delphi-style survey

Dear colleague,

With the aim to provide UK Dental Undergraduates a systematic education based upon current best evidence, we have developed an undergraduate curriculum for Indirect Restorations and Removable Prosthodontics. Although European curriculum guidelines for undergraduate students have been developed in other dental fields, none exist for Prosthodontics. Therefore, the British Society of Prosthodontics (BSSPD) has formed a working group to develop an undergraduate prosthodontic curriculum. Primarily this is aimed at UK dental undergraduate students however we welcome comments from our European colleagues in the hope that their input will make this curriculum accessible for everyone involved, including programmes across the wider world.

The curriculum follows the ADEE Graduating European Dentist (GED) curriculum by following a behaviour-based learning outcome approach.

Included are the capability domains of:

• knowledge of the scientific and evidence-base
• general prosthodontic learning outcomes
• indirect restorations
• removable prosthodontics.

The proposed curriculum has taken into account the Delphi consensus reported by Khalaf et al. 2022² to represent recently agreed important content in an undergraduate prosthodontic curriculum. Papers reporting curricula for digital workflows³ and artificial intelligence⁴ have also been taken into account.

Findings from this survey will establish how clear, how important and how difficult each learning outcome of the proposed curriculum is perceived to be. It is expected that the consensus view on these aspects will help educators to use the document to maximum effect when deriving local curricula. The process of deconstructing more complex tasks and teaching essential skills early, and reinforcing longitudinally, is described previously by Field et al 2022¹.

Introduction to Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes are defined as “a series of individual and objective outcomes, with shared ownership between students and staff, designed to facilitate the learning and assessment process”⁵. They are very much a guide for students to direct their own learning, and for educators to plan a course of study, and to formulate assessments.

Within each capability domain, every learning outcome and has been highlighted as blue, green or yellow to represent the ideal educational environment and assessment style to achieve each individual learning outcome:

Clinical LO – directly observable within a clinical or skills environment
Supporting Clinical LO – directly observable within clinical or skills environment, or through case-based discussion, or written assessment
Fundamental LO – assessable through discussion or written assessment

Introduction to Competencies

Competencies are defined as “a professional behaviour or skill required by a graduating Oral Health Professional in order to respond to the full range of circumstances encountered within their professional practice”⁵. As such, competencies may comprise a number of discrete learning outcomes that require application to a scenario or task.

After each section of behaviour-based learning outcomes, a number of suggested competencies are listed.

Final comments

There is the opportunity to provide free text comments for any additional suggestions or comments. Completion of this survey should take around 40 minutes.

Participation in this project is voluntary. All survey responses are anonymous, no personal data will be collected. Due to the anonymous data collection, it will not be possible to remove your submitted responses at a later date. The data will be collated and presented in the form of descriptive statistics.

1. Field, J, Dixon, J, Towers, A, et al. Defining dental operative skills curricula: An ADEE consensus paper. Eur J Dent Educ. 2021; 25: 405–414. https://doi.org/10.1111/eje.12595
2. Khalaf KA, Moore C, McKenna G, Da Mata C, Lynch CD. Undergraduate teaching and assessment methods in prosthodontics curriculum: An international Delphi survey J Dent. 2022 Aug:123:104207.
3. Zitzmann NU, Lea Matthisson L, Ohla H, Joda T. Digital Undergraduate Education in Dentistry: A Systematic Review Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 May; 17(9): 3269.
4. Schwendicke F, Chaurasia A, Wiegand T, Uribe SE, Fontana M, Akota I, Tryfonos O, Krois J; IADR e-oral health network and the ITU/WHO focus group AI for health. Artificial intelligence for oral and dental healthcare: Core education curriculum J Dent. 2023 Jan:128:104363.
5. Davies, JR, Field, J, Dixon, J, et al. ARTICULATE: A European glossary of terms used in oral health professional education. Eur J Dent Educ. 2023; 27: 209–222. doi:10.1111/eje.12794
6. Field, JC, Kavadella, A, Szep, S, Davies, JR, DeLap, E, Manzanares Cespedes, MC. The Graduating European Dentist—Domain III: Patient-Centred Care. Eur J Dent Educ. 2017; 21(Suppl. 1): 18-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/eje.12310