Developing the next generation of leaders in oral health

Given the challenges facing oral health providers as practitioners, community leaders, and educators, expanding dental curricula with an introductory course on leadership is timely and necessary. Such a course will sow the seeds of leadership by defining its importance in the dental profession and creating an understanding that the skills associated with leadership need to be developed over a lifetime. This article reports on a conference session in which a group of faculty members and students discussed the need and value of teaching leadership, compared leadership programs from four U.S. dental schools, and proposed an implementation framework for leadership programs at other dental schools. The moderator led discussion of participants' suggestions for course materials and implementation frameworks in small-group sessions. The participants' responses were captured using standardized worksheets. Time, including faculty members' and students', was considered the biggest barrier to implementing a leadership course. A number of opportunities were identified, including the ability for interprofessional collaboration and the opportunity for students to grow and learn. Creating a core course with optional components was considered the most attractive option. In this experience, the participants gained perspective on the challenges and opportunities for developing a leadership curriculum and were provided with a tangible product for further development.