Data for: Environmental Sustainability in Oral Health Professional Education: Approaches, Challenges, and Drivers—ADEE Special-Interest Group Report

Data and questionnaire supporting the paper 'Environmental Sustainability in Oral Health Professional Education: Approaches, Challenges, and Drivers—ADEE Special-Interest Group Report'.

Introduction: This paper reports on the scholarship activity of the ‘Sustainability in Dentistry’ Special-interest Group (SiG), which met at the ADEE annual conference in Liverpool on 25 August 2023. The aim of this study was to (i) identify current teaching practices and approaches to embedding Environmental Sustainability (ES) in the curriculum in ADEE attendee schools and (ii) explore existing barriers/challenges that complicate incorporating ES in dental education and consider potential solutions. 

Methodology: A mixed-methods approach was used to fulfil the aims of this study. A pre-workshop questionnaire was used to explore current teaching practices, challenges, and drivers of embedding ES in the curriculum. An interactive workshop at the in-person meeting in Liverpool was used to propose key strategies to overcome the most frequent challenges to embedding ES in the curriculum.

Results: The majority of respondents (56%) reported that their institutions do not currently teach ES. Traditional didactic forms of teaching were mostly reported to teach ES in non-clinical environments, and a transition to more environmentally sustainable materials and instruments was the most popular response for clinical teaching. Key barriers to embedding Environmental Sustainability in the curriculum were identified, including time constraints and the overloaded curriculum, a lack of expertise/knowledge to teach and lack of practical guidance to support educators, limited learning resources for staff and students and resistance from colleagues regarding the relevance of Environmental Sustainability in dentistry. The special-interest group participants proposed strategies to overcome these challenges that centred around fourteen themes.

Conclusion: This paper reports recent scholarship activity by ADEE’s ‘Sustainability in Dentistry’ SiG. Key strategies for overcoming the most common challenges to embedding ES in the curriculum are also discussed.

This study received ethical approval from the Dentistry Ethics Committee at the lead author’s institution (application number 056060).