Opinions of Botswana dental therapists and students about their professional education

This paper presents an evaluation of the training programme for dental therapists in Botswana. It describes the impetus for the creation of the training programme and its content provided by the principles of Primary Health Care. The opinions of the students and serving dental therapists were investigated through self-complete questionnaires. Both groups wished to develop advanced restorative skills and wanted more time to be allocated to that section of the course which would allow this. In contrast, their interest was less in other sections of the course more specifically concerned with the principles of Primary Health Care, such as the development of communication skills. It is suggested that the findings reflect a confusion about the practice of Primary Health Care.