Education and training in craft skills dentistry

In order to best use available resources, the dental workforce needs to be sufficiently skilled to provide the correct treatment in the right place in the patient pathway, without need for escalation to secondary care. Education is a means to improve quality of healthcare with significance being placed on the proficiency of teaching and effectiveness of learning. The aim is to make the most efficient use of resources to upskill the existing workforce without significant reduction in the services that can be provided during training. With increasing academic demands on the undergraduate curriculum, there may be an expectation that general dental practitioners involved in vocational training now have a larger role to play in providing clinical training for the graduating dentists of the future. With this in mind, this article provides a narrative overview of the concepts to be considered in dental education and training. More education and training activities may be expected to take place in the workplace; therefore general dental practitioners may be at the forefront of providing high quality practice-based dental education and training in the future.