A new challenge in teaching radiology to dental students

In 2001 The Faculty of Dentistry, Sydney University, Australia embarked upon a New Dental Curriculum. This curriculum is a four year program which is integrated with the Faculty of Medicine four year Graduate Medical Program. The dental program aims to produce dentists capable of meeting the changing aspects of dentistry and to be committed to maintaining the highest professional standards. The program has few lectures, is web based, integrates the different disciplines traditionally found in dentistry and aims to produce a General Dental Practitioner whose aim is self-directed life-long learning. The challenge faced was to change the teaching and assessment to accommodate the new curriculum and to develop the necessary clinical radiological skill within each student using problem based learning (PBL) and web based technology. Structured, Clinical, Objective, Referenced, Problem orientated, Integrated, Organized (SCORPIO) was the method of choice and proved in the case of radiology to be a very effective way of presenting a large amount of information in a short time frame and was, based on evaluation findings, well accepted by the students.