New Dental Graduates’ Experiences and Curriculum Fulfilment During COVID-19

Objectives: Dental Foundation Training (DFT) is a 1-year national training scheme for UK new dental graduates. Its primary purpose is to ensure newly qualified dentists develop into competent, safe practitioners, and gain experience of primary care. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged dentistry, causing severe disruption to all aspects of the profession. Due to the paucity of literature addressing this topic, the objective of this research was to understand if DFTs felt they fulfilled the curriculum requirements during the pandemic, and if any additional skills or opportunities for professional development were gained.
Methods: An online survey comprising 31 questions was distributed to dentists enrolled in DFT in the UK in 2019-2020 via Wales Postgraduate Dental Deanery.
Results: The response rate was 63%. Despite the pandemic disruption, all DFTs felt they had satisfactorily achieved the professionalism competencies of their curriculum framework, and 94% felt they had fulfilled the requirements of both the communication and management & leadership domains. Clinical competencies were least fulfilled, with 82% feeling they had achieved these competencies satisfactorily. The majority (88%) felt that doing DFT during the pandemic had provided them with additional skills, particularly improved ability to cope with stressful situations (59%) and dental emergencies (53%). Only 1 DFT was redeployed outside of dentistry as a result of the pandemic. A small number of teaching sessions were cancelled, but most were rearranged for online delivery, preventing disruption to learning.
Conclusions: DFTs were able to satisfactorily fulfil the requirements of their curriculum, as well as successfully completing necessary academic and portfolio activities, despite the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching was mostly maintained by moving to remote and online delivery. Overall, it seems the pandemic has not been detrimental DFTs and has provided some positive outcomes in the development of additional skills and attributes.