Shortening dental school “a dodgy plan”
In recent months, a committee of dentists and dental administrators has investigated the possible shortening of dental school from six to five years. The conclusion: it’s a bad plan.
“If the education is shortened to five years, we can no longer guarantee a good dental education,” says former Acta dean and professor of dentistry Albert Feilzer, who sat on the committee. The political tinkering with the length of dental education is slowly getting to him. “When I was a student, the course lasted six years, then it became five years, then six years again, and now it should be five years again? This is not helping the quality of the training.”
Last spring the alarm was already sounded by Feilzer and others from the profession when it appeared that (now outgoing) Minister Kuipers (D66) of VWS wanted to shorten the training from six to five years so that students could be pushed through the program more quickly to remedy the shortage of dentists. In 10 years, an aging population will mean that 42 percent of the dentists currently working will have stopped practicing, according to calculations by the Health Care Capacity Agency, which issues advice and estimates for the desired intake into medical schools. As a result, Kuipers decided to train more dentists and take the money needed to do so away from medicine. Agreements were to be reached with the sector about this in the third quarter.
Those agreements would be made partly on the basis of the findings of a committee, which included Feilzer. The committee, says Feilzer, came to the same conclusion as previously assumed: it can not be done, it won't deliver quality and, according to Feilzer, is “a strange and bizarre plan. Especially the trade-off with medicine.”
Ambition
The Dutch dentist shortage is currently leading to an annual influx of 200 dentists trained abroad - including from Belgium - where there is usually a five-year training period. According to Feilzer, the five-year training there is possible in part because of the more ambitious study culture, which enables them to turn out certified dentists (with BIG registration) in five years. Feilzer says, “That is difficult to achieve in the Dutch student culture. In a country like Belgium, they have no consideration for students. They just have to pass that course in five years. That culture does not prevail here.” The industry does want more dentists, but not by having them graduate faster. In addition to Amsterdam, Groningen, and Nijmegen, a fourth dental school could be started. Rotterdam, where Kuipers was chairman of the Board of Governors of Erasmus MC before he became minister, would like to see that happen.
Meanwhile, the cabinet fell in July, the minister is leaving, and a new cabinet will take office in the short or medium term, which may or may not adopt the D66 minister’s plan to shorten the duration of training. Hopefully not, is the industry’s view and the committee’s conclusion. Perhaps a new minister of a different persuasion will feel the same way. Feilzer hopes so, but that is by no means certain.
The issue is politically sensitive, so current interim Acta dean Hans Romijn does not want to say too much about the report. “It would be awkward if this came out during the inopportune phase surrounding the elections.”
