A Trial of an Inter-university Collaborative Dental Postgraduate Clinical-training Curriculum to Understand Community-based Comprehensive Care and Medical-Dental Cooperation

Abstract

 Abstract In the new dental postgraduate clinical-training program in Japan, which started in 2022, dental residents must understand and be able to explain the community-based comprehensive-care system and the role of dentistry therein. Optional components of the program include experiencing visiting dental care, visiting community-medicine facilities on remote islands and in remote areas, performing perioperative oral management, and participating in team medicine in support of multiple professions for home-care or hospitalized patients. Prior to this program, Fukuoka Dental College Medical and Dental Hospital and Kyushu University Hospital introduced an inter-university collaborative-training curriculum as a part of their dental postgraduate clinical-training programs to take advantage of each other’s strengths and complement each other’s weaknesses. In that program, resident dentists from both universities were trained for a certain period in dental care and perioperative oral management at each hospital. A post-training questionnaire revealed a high level of interest in and understanding of the training, and many positive comments were received. Regarding career paths after training, most of the resident dentists at Fukuoka Dental College Medical and Dental Hospital worked at universities, whereas most of those at Kyushu University Hospital worked at dental clinics. As a result, this inter-university dental postgraduate clinical-training curriculum was considered useful to enhance interest in and understanding of community-based comprehensive-care systems and cooperation between the medical and dental professions.