Curriculum Content for Environmental Sustainability in Dentistry

The files provided are the raw un-edited transcripts from the focus group discussions detailed below that is part of the publication supported by this study as per the following abstract:

Objectives: (i) Identify suitable strategies and opportunities to embed Environmental Sustainability (ES) within an existing Oral Health Professional (OHP) curriculum through a series of focus groups with students and academic staff and (ii) Create high-level evidence-based and subject-specific ES content through an approach grounded in evidence and collaboration with key stakeholders in OHP education.

Methods: Focus groups were used to explore academic staff and student views on appropriate teaching and assessment methods for ES. Content statements were developed from an extensive literature search, mapped to curriculum subjects, and validated through consultation with students, discipline-experts and education-experts.

Results: Five themes were identified from the focus groups: Environmental Sustainability transcends all disciplines of dentistry and oral healthcare; Baseline knowledge transmission with relevant practical application; Viewing and modifying existing teaching and assessment events through a different lens; Normalising the topic of Environmental Sustainability to support attitude and behaviour change and Safeguarding against misinformation and disinformation. Content statements were developed and mapped to 19 curriculum subjects.

Conclusions: Environmental Sustainability is a challenging concept to incorporate in the OHP curriculum. This research explores key stakeholder opinion on strategies to embed ES in existing curricula. A novel method of defining and mapping evidence-based curriculum content to all curriculum subjects has been demonstrated. These statements can be directly applied to existing educational events by all educators as they see fit.

Clinical Significance: Oral healthcare has a significant environmental impact, the key to all mitigation strategies is by educating the profession at all levels.