Dental Asia January/February 2024

Prof Peck addressing the cohort of first-year students and their family members in September 2023
Dental education has embraced technologies
and advanced simulation learning
environments to help students develop
competency through individualised training of
such surgical skills.
Some of the initiatives at the NUS Faculty of
Dentistry to integrate technology in student
learning include a collaboration with the
NUS College of Design and Engineering to
develop a 3D-printed dental extraction kit to
simulate teeth extraction for a broad range
of scenarios. A 3D-printed silicon device was
also developed to train students to administer
local anaesthesia in an augmented-reality
setting before performing on actual patients.
Digital workflows are utilised to improve
outcomes in oral and maxillofacial surgery
through customised 3D-printed maxillofacial
prostheses to reconstruct and promote bone
growth in bony defects.
“Of course, we need to consider the impact of
technology on an individual’s data privacy and
the responsible use of technology in decisionmaking.
These are not issues unique to
dentistry and we have developed the Common
Curriculum across health professions to
address such issues," said Prof Peck.
Alongside the increasing use of technology in
dentistry, there is a growing awareness of the
need to harness data in informing the practice
of evidence-based oral healthcare. In an
age of big data, the role of such information
and an understanding of how it is collected,
managed, and analysed will help students
to make use of it, and guide their decisionmaking
processes in the diagnosis and
subsequent design of patient treatment plans.
With this context in mind, a keen awareness
and appreciation of how data can be critiqued
will help students embrace evidence-informed
approaches to healthcare. To achieve this,
two pillars of the Common Curriculum seek to
imbue skills and knowledge in data literacy.
The first-year course on data literacy features
components of evidence-based practice
and covers the principles of data analysis as
well as decision-making under uncertainty
which are relevant to clinical practice. This
foundation is expanded further in a secondyear
course which explores skills such as
computational thinking, data science, AI, and
machine learning in the healthcare context,
and more.
"Healthcare needs to be underpinned by
evidence and while there have been enormous
advances in biomedical research over the past
century, we are considering a more integrated
approach of research, education and clinical
care so that research is targeted, and research
findings are implemented effectively and
efficiently," said Prof Peck.
Such an approach can be used in various
stages of the student lifecycle, from
undergraduate through to postgraduate
education and continuing professional
development, to help develop and maintain
competencies.
Furthermore, Prof Peck believes that a personcentred,
rather than patient-centred
approach, is needed to manage oral health at
both individual and population levels to place
greater emphasis on prevention. This is
illustrated where dental professionals typically
believe chronic pain patients are primarily keen
on reducing pain intensity. However, these
patients often prioritise a desire to restore their
regular family, social and work activities.
Another interprofessional approach involves
working with language experts to enhance
communication and health literacy to improve
applied research and community health
outcomes.
“Importantly, all of us in dental education and
research need to consider what the dental
professional of 2030 and beyond looks like,
as we are now training graduates for then.
The dental professional needs to be firmly
embedded as part of the healthcare team and
focus on a person-centred approach,” Prof
Peck concluded.
With the confluence of economic conditions,
society values, technology enablers, and
demographic factors shaping health and
healthcare across the globe, the new Common
Curriculum will better prepare students across
various health professions to take on the
healthcare needs of the population. DA
24 DENTAL ASIA JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2024