Dental education in Wuhan, China: challenges and changes

The aim of this article is to describe the innovations in the School of Stomatology at Wuhan University (WHUSS) that are likely to shape the future of dental education in the People's Republic of China. There are forty dental schools in China; the five most well known are located in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Xi'an, and Wuhan. Although patient-centered, comprehensive care has been recommended as the future of dental education, traditional dental education in China still faces many challenges to accomplish this goal. WHUSS, one of the more progressive dental schools in China, has implemented several educational innovations to traditional dental education by restructuring the curriculum through the introduction of problem-based learning (PBL) and other strategies in clinical training. Although implementation of educational innovations is still at an early stage throughout China, it is reasonable to speculate that many schools will develop similar strategies as those developed at Wuhan to improve dental education during the next several years. However, additional research is necessary to evaluate the efficacy of such educational strategies and to determine the appropriate implementation of a contemporary dental curriculum and pedagogic methodology. The curriculum modifications that have been achieved to date as well as the existing challenges are discussed to provide the reader with an understanding of contemporary dental education in China.