Effects of the new undergraduate dental curriculum of 1979

A new curriculum for dental education was introduced in Sweden in 1979. Among other things the basic training was cut down from 10 to 9 semesters and a preregistration year in the Public Dental service was added. In this study two cohorts of dentists, one having studied under the old and one under the new curriculum, having 1 to 3 years practical experience of the dental profession, were asked to evaluate their undergraduate education as seen from a practising dentist's point of view. The results showed that the dentists trained under the new curriculum regarded their theoretical knowledge, clinical skills, and the relevance of their training generally higher than those trained under the old curriculum. However, the correlations between the old and the new curriculum with respect to the rankings of the individual subjects were high, indicating that no radical changes had occurred in the preference orders of the subjects. The self-estimated importance of different subjects for the dental profession may reflect the dentists' present working situation, e.g. the Public Dental Service or private practice.