Educational centres in the UAE are gearing up to launch continuing professional development programmes for dentists, in a bid to plug the current gap in the region’s CPD market.
An announcement by the Ministry of Health last year demanded dentists obtain a minimum of 15 hours CPD annually, to retain their licenses. The poor availability of regional courses has seen clinicians allocate time and funding to travel to international courses to notch up the necessary educational hours.
By creating local CPD programmes, institutions look set to profit by providing cheaper and more accessible options for regional dentists.
Professor Rani Bin Samsudin, dean of the University of Sharjah’s College of Dentistry, said the college is surveying dentists to establish CPD needs, before finalising its course list.
“Dental education in this region is a vacuum,” he told Middle East Dentist. “There is nothing offered at the moment by the local universities.”
Professor Rachid Hadjhamou, acting dean for the School of Medical Sciences and Environmental Health, Canadian University of Dubai (CUD), said the school also has its sights set on the local CPD market.
“Dentistry should be a continuous learning process, but there is not much opportunity for professionals in the region to attend courses to improve themselves,” he said. “I have been fighting since the 1980s to have an established facility for CPD.”
CUD is in the process of having its dental curriculum accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education, he added.
Following last month’s announcement of the tie-up between Boston University’s and Dubai Healthcare City, regional institutes are readying themselves to compete for graduates.
Samsudin believes the University of Sharjah is well equipped to rival Boston for the pick of local talent.
“The University of Sharjah is a very strong university and it has good departments in the fundamental sciences, which in a postgraduate dental university is very important,” he said. “That’s where we actually fare better than Boston. With postgraduate training, a lot of it is based on research and we feel that we will be more than competitive in this region.”
Samsudin’s efforts to develop the university’s programmes have been hampered, however, by delays to the construction of a 120-chair dental hospital on campus. The centre was scheduled to open last month.
“It has been delayed for a year so may be operational in September of 2008,” he said.
“In postgraduate dental education, a large part of it is hands-on in the dental hospital so we need to have the facility up and running. I think a year is realistic.”
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