Undergraduate endodontic education: what are the challenges?

To deliver the knowledge and skills required to equip undergraduate students for practice is a significant responsibility; graduates must be familiar with the diagnosis and treatment of pulpal and periradicular diseases and the preservation and restoration of pulpally compromised teeth. A greater understanding of the microbiological processes involved in endodontics and developments in instruments and materials have transformed our approaches to root canal treatment. Information technology has revolutionised certain aspects of education and has had an effect on endodontic teaching. Dental graduates will be expected to treat an increasingly elderly population and will enter a climate in which remuneration for root canal treatment could have a significant effect on the number of cases treated and the pattern of referral. Teachers of endodontics at the majority of dental schools are taxed by competing demands for time in packed curricula, a lack of availability of natural teeth for classroom exercise and a lack of suitable patients. The debate as to whether endodontics should be a specialist subject in its own right has rumbled on for three decades. Compared with the situation in the 1970s, there are now well defined curricula guidelines to which those involved in teaching can refer and map teaching in their schools against agreed norms. These create the potential for students to graduate with the knowledge and skills at a sound level of competence to carry out endodontic procedures and with a deeply engrained understanding of the need for continuing professional development.