Re-establishing the primacy of the basic sciences in undergraduate dental education

摘要

Frequent and, at times, drastic curricular changes in undergraduate dental education in the UK during the past 15 or so years have posed considerable challenges to those involved in the planning, organisation and delivery of effective teaching programmes within the ambit of the curriculum. Nowhere is this more true and, indeed, more critical than in the provision of instruction in the basic sciences: anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology and microbiology, oral biology and pharmacotherapeutics. At the outset you may be tempted to ask: why must the curriculum change at all?