A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Medicine and dentistry
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practices and indicate areas in which the GDC would like to see further movement,
including working in a dental team and the further development of outreach teaching that
makes use of learning technology (GDC, 2006).
Postgraduate training in the UK has been the subject of much recent change and
scrutiny and has increasing impact on undergraduate education. There is growing
concern for a more holistic view of undergraduate and postgraduate training and for
a continuum of learning and updating extending until retirement. The vocational
year for newly qualified dentists is a requirement prior to independent National Health
Service (NHS) practice and specialty registers were established some years ago.
In postgraduate medicine several far-reaching and hugely challenging changes
have occurred in political control and the structure of training. In 2005 the government
set up the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board responsible for postgraduate
training. In 2006, as a by-product of Sir Liam Donaldson’s ‘Unfinished business’
(DoH, 2002), Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) was born. MMC saw the creation of
the ‘Foundation Programme’, encompassing the first two postgraduate training years
and the specialist ‘run-through’ training programmes. These were competency based,
educationally supervised and structured with defined outcomes. They promised to
‘improve patient care by delivering a modernised and focussed career structure for
doctors’ (MMC, 2007a). The Tooke Report (MMC, 2007b) is likely to result in further
change.
In coming years with increasing clinical responsibilities being given to allied healthcare
professionals, the further development of interprofessional practice, the shift to primary
care, the growing use of evidence-based practice, enhanced use of technology, and more
specialities entering the postgraduate preserve, the role of dentists and doctors will
continue to evolve. All these developments have implications for undergraduate
curriculum design, teaching, workplace learning and assessment. Among possibilities on
the horizon are national undergraduate exit assessment and a national core curriculum.
Interrogating practice
Are you familiar with national recommendations for undergraduate and
postgraduate training operating in your country and speciality?
PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
Problem-based learning is an idea that has had currency since the 1960s (Neufeld and
Barrows, 1974), but was not widely used in medical and dental education in the UK until
the mid-1990s. It is now an element in many UK medical and dental undergraduate
curricula, in some cases being the main organising principle and pedagogical method.