FUTURE OFDENTISTRYdental education is the vehicle for life-long learning in
dentistry. Dental education's long-standing leadership
role in continuing dental education will be increasing-
ly challenged by for-profit entities, both dental and
non-dental in nature. Continuing dental education
will be increasingly delivered in three formats:
u The standard, traditional lecture;
u Interactive self-instruction, along with automat-
ed real-time testing, both via the Internet; and,
u Hands-on, participation courses.
Continuing education (CE) will take advantageof Internet communication. Most dental CE experts
predict that much of the current lecture-style dental
CE format will increasingly move to the Internet,
where sophisticated interactive programs will offer
a very large range of high quality CE courses at rel-
atively low prices. Many individual dental faculty
members have already become involved in offering
dental CE using the Internet as the registration, pay-
ment, delivery and testing system. Internet-based
dental CE will pose a major challenge to dental
schools because of the academic institutions' low
investments in, and generally limited resources for,
the types of information technology (IT) and pro-
duction facilities necessary for competitive Internet-
based dental CE program offerings.Dental Education
The United States should have a dental education
system that generates the knowledge base and that
provides the ethical and professional dental workforce
necessary to meet the nation's oral health needs.
Today's dental education system must be strength-
ened and made more dynamic if the country is to
achieve this vision. Achieving this goal will require
energetic leadership and willingness to embrace
needed change, by the dental profession, the dental
education community and the public.
The public, through the leadership of its state and
federal agencies, must recognize the value of optimal
oral health and must therefore accept the ultimate
responsibility to ensure the education of dental
researchers, dental teachers and dental care providers.
Only in this way will dental knowledge be transmitted
by dental educators to dental students who become
the providers of professional dental services for the
public. Research, education and service are the triad
that will assure a healthy public.
The dental profession, as individuals and through
its professional organizations, also benefits from a
high quality dental education system. In the United
States that system takes just four years to transform
talented university students into highly competent
and ethical dental professionals whose provision of
complex services for the public allow the dental pro-
fessionals to enjoy a fulfilling and rewarding career.
All dental professionals are the product of dental
education, a reality on which dentistry and dental
education could well build a stronger and more pro-
ductive partnership for the future.
Dentistry and dental education should both real-
ize that modern science points to an ever-increasing
convergence between oral health and total health.
This powerful reality does not presage the weaken-
ing or disappearance of dentistry, rather it provides
the rationale for dentistry to play a more confident
role in the modern academic health center, and for
dentists to develop a closer partnership with their
medical colleagues. In all academic health centers
medicine is the lead engine of health care education
and research, and dentistry flourishes and becomes
more if it pulls in unison with the other partners in
the academic health setting. In the long run, neither
dentistry nor dental education will flourish if den-
tistry seeks to go it alone at every opportunity.
In working toward the vision for dental educa-
tion for the future, there are many actions that the
dental profession, as individual practicing and
retired dentists or through their leadership organi-
zations, can undertake. For example, the dental
profession should continue efforts to educate
Congress and the state legislatures about the press-
ing need for substantially increased facilities and
financial operating support for dental education.
Other actions include:u Collaborate with the ADEA to fund and formu-
late a program to proactively and constructively
promote dental education within the nation's uni-
versities and academic health centers.