I recently completed an MSc in Restorative Dental Practice at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute. I was drawn to the course because of Eastman’s reputation. In my opinion it is one of the top postgraduate dental training establishments in the UK. The course itself attracted me because it was a fairly broad restorative course encompassing a wide range of disciplines in restorative dentistry.
A part-time course, the Restorative Dental Practice programme comprises three levels: certificate, diploma and masters. I successfully completed all three levels within five years. The flexibility of a part-time course meant I was able to fit my studies around a busy work and family schedule.
The first year of the course, the certificate year, required attendance approximately one day a fortnight. There was also a little bit of extra coursework and reading material, but the structure was essentially lectures and seminars in the morning, with practical hands-on application of the new knowledge in the skills lab in the afternoon. The focus wasn’t to spoon feed you answers to every clinical outcome, it was to help you to think your way around cases based on the new concepts you’d mastered.
The next stage, the diploma element, involved revising and reading up on dental materials including what materials we were using, new alternatives, and the pros and cons of each. We had to select further modules to study and I chose an aesthetics module and a dental implants module.
One highlight of the diploma for me was presenting my work to others. The exercise of putting together the portfolio of cases for examination by an expert panel meant that you really did need to think about what you’re doing and why, techniques and materials, and whether there are any perceived better alternatives. You’ve also got to be able to defend what you’ve done robustly. I think that made me revise what I was doing and whether there ought to be any improvement based on the new knowledge I had acquired.
The final stage of the Restorative Dental Practice programme, the MSc, was thesis-based and for this I decided to undertake an original piece of research. Students are given a choice, they can do a literature review, or a research based project. They have suggestions for potential research projects but you are also permitted to decide on your own as I did.
To help with our projects, we were given a short statistics course and a practical course on writing a dissertation. After that, it was largely up to us, though there was support if we needed it. I have to say from my experience, the microbiologists in the lab in the microbiology department were very good. The academic staff were then very supportive with advice for finally writing the dissertation.
I was of course pleased to pass the course with distinction, but you don’t change overnight once you’ve got your qualification. It’s actually a continual change over the course of the five years. Every year was valuable and it’s basically changed what I do on a daily basis in the practice.
The programme gives delegates access to a range of expertise. There was a large pool of lecturers who came in and assisted. We usually had the same few tutors throughout the year, which was good for continuity, but if there was a sub-speciality discipline, extra subject matter experts were also present. I think the calibre of the lecturing was really very high.
There was also much to be gained from fellow delegates on the course. I think that’s another benefit, the fact that you’re in a group with predominantly general dental practitioners. We all had very similar experiences in so far as we were working and going on the course. It was nice to share ideas and discuss general practice experiences and the challenges it faces. There was almost as much to be gained from that element as there was from the direct teaching.