Priorities of undergraduate dental education: what do students think?

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the teaching of behavioural sciences to dental undergraduates, but psychologists and sociologists can meet with resistance to their teaching from both staff and students. In an attempt to understand this resistance further, this paper provides the results of a cross-sectional survey conducted with undergraduate students at two UK dental schools. The results indicate that students believe that training in technical aspects of care (e.g. practice in manual skills, knowledge about anatomy) should assume a substantially higher priority than training in social aspects (e.g. practice in communication skills, knowledge about psychology). The students felt that they were increasingly prepared for both aspects of practice as they progressed through the course, and senior students were more likely to believe that their dental schools should give a higher priority to history-taking and psychological methods to control pain and anxiety than junior students. These results present a considerable challenge for psychologists and sociologists teaching at dental schools and suggest that appropriate curriculum design and integrated teaching may be the way forward.