A new dental curriculum for chinese research universities.

The current dental curriculum in China was developed from the system in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. This curriculum is outdated and must be reformed to keep pace with the developments of modern dental education. The new dental educational system should be customized to China's needs: care for a large population with poor overall oral health, operating within a government-owned, centralized health care delivery system. Chinese research universities have a mission to produce competent dentists who will also be educators and researchers. To efficiently train academic dentists who can also meet the clinical needs of today's Chinese population, a new dental curriculum was developed at the Institute and Hospital of Dentistry, Nanjing University Medical School. This curriculum has four main features: 1) a two-year general higher education plus five-year dental education ("2+5") model; 2) improved integration of didactic and practical learning; 3) improved integration of dental education with research training; and 4) improved overall sequencing of the entire curriculum. This article describes the details of this new dental curriculum.