An innovative interprofessional dental clinical learning environment using entrustable professional activities

Changes in society, new public demands for dental care and contemporary educational insights have influenced dental education worldwide and demand a renewed perspective. Following this perspective, an innovative interprofessional dental Master curriculum was developed at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

The curriculum is based on five contemporary educational principles and the core of the curriculum consists of a Student Run Dental Clinic that is fully run by students under professional supervision.

In the Student Run Dental Clinic, Master dental students and Bachelor oral hygiene students are responsible for the care of approximately 750 patients. The students work within the same clinic for 3 years and patients receive oral health care from the same students over a long period. The clinic is a longitudinal cross-disciplinary clinic with different dental subdisciplines. Entrustable professional activities (also known as EPAs), to our knowledge not yet widely used in dental education, were introduced to facilitate learning and assessment. Fourteen EPAs have been developed to stimulate interprofessional education and learning. Of these, five EPAs are identical for the dental and oral hygiene curriculum, leading to extended interprofessional education and learning in the Student Run Dental Clinic.

Preliminary results show that EPAs are generally well received by supervisors and students.

To monitor and investigate the exact effect of the interventions and underlying mechanisms, a research programme on interprofessional learning, practice-based learning and EPAs and entrustment in dental education was recently set up.