The Melbourne Dental course

Each year is worth 100 credit points, the University's measure of study load, and is made up of a few large subjects, or a single one in the final year. Science, simulation and clinical work are taught side by side, sometimes within one subject, as the Year 2 section below shows. The school says the DDS also encourages self-directed learning.

The new curriculum began in 2024 after a review that started in 2020. It drew on staff, students, clinical teachers and patient-experience data reviewed with Dental Health Services Victoria. It builds in the ADC's competencies for newly qualified dental practitioners, adds sustainability, and puts more weight on digital health and case-based learning, where teaching is built around a patient's case. In special needs dentistry, for example, you learn how a patient's condition affects how you gain consent and communicate.

Anatomy has its own Year 1 subject, Structure and Function in Dentistry (18.75 points), which covers the head and neck. It follows how tissues and structures develop from the embryo until growth is complete, and covers functional anatomy such as occlusion, meaning how the upper and lower teeth meet. You also study the development and shape of baby and adult teeth, how their structure relates to their function, and the basic neuroscience a dentist needs.

The subject draws on medical imaging of several kinds, from microscope views to 3D technologies. The school's 2024 research report describes a foundational anatomy subject in which students complete a range of workshop activities and choose some of them for an assessed portfolio. By 2022 a school project had also scanned more than 70 skulls and teeth, including a thylacine skull, with CT and micro-CT. The scans became virtual 3D models and prints that students can handle without risk to rare specimens.

Anatomy then carries into the clinical subjects: Preclinical Dental Practice and Specialty preclinical dental practice both ask you to apply it as you learn procedures.

You do not treat patients in Year 1. You learn the procedures for taking a patient's history, examining them and planning treatment. You also practise techniques on manikins, along with correct posture, safety and teamwork in the dental surgery as operator or assistant. Before any clinical work, the University registers you as a student with AHPRA, within 30 days of admission and at no cost to you.

You must also clear the faculty's pre-placement checks. They include immunisation checks such as hepatitis B, influenza and tuberculosis, a police check and a Working with Children Check. The faculty warns they can take three to eight months to complete. A first aid certificate is due within the first four weeks of Semester 1 of first year, and you must keep it valid for the whole course.

Patient care begins in Year 2. Under supervision you examine patients, draw up treatment plans and carry out procedures in general practice, periodontics (gum treatment) and removable prosthodontics (dentures). You also learn to recognise medical emergencies in the dental chair. The ADC records that the first group on the new curriculum entered the clinic as Year 2 students in 2025.

At the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne, the school says, its students treat patients every week. Patient information for the hospital's teaching clinic says appointments with students can last up to three hours, generally in 9am to 12pm or 2pm to 5pm sessions on weekdays.

You must pass every subject in a year before moving on to the next. In the 2026 calendar, there are two main exam periods, in June and November, each after a SWOTVAC week, a week without classes to revise. Supplementary exams, a further sitting, follow in July and December, and results come after a meeting of the board of examiners. Practical skills are tested in OSCEs.

Attendance is a hurdle in every subject: a requirement you must meet to pass, whatever your marks. You must report any absence. A planned absence of up to 10 days needs your Year Coordinator's approval. Longer absences, or any that clash with an assessment, go through special consideration, the University's process for circumstances that affect your study.

On placement, host clinics take part in assessing you. The school gives clinical supervisors specific assessment forms, and their written feedback, given at regular intervals, counts towards your assessment. Portfolios also feature: in 2023, under the previous curriculum, final-year orientation included a session on portfolio expectations using PebblePad, an online portfolio system.

• Fitness to practise: because the course includes placements, the University's Student Fitness to Practice Policy and the faculty's Fitness to Practice Rules apply. If concerns are raised, the faculty can offer extra support or intervene formally.
• Inherent requirements: the course has inherent requirements, the core abilities a student needs to complete it, set out in the University handbook.

Supervised patient care starts in Year 2, and placements at outside host clinics follow in Years 3 and 4, taking up most of the final year. They are run through Sonia, the faculty's placement administration system, which also tracks your pre-placement checks. The faculty's guidance for host clinics says students attend several placements each year. Because students may feel anxious at the start, particularly early in the year, hosts are encouraged to give each one an orientation.

On an outside placement you are expected to work as part of the clinic's team, following its procedures and caring for its patients to the standard expected of its own staff. The work includes taking histories, treating patients, taking radiographs and teaching patients to care for their teeth, plus case discussions with your supervisor and oral health promotion or outreach programs. University insurance covers students on placement for personal accident, professional indemnity and public liability.

The school's student forms page, last updated in February 2025, lists rural placement rotations to Shepparton, Morwell and Moe. In 2022, final-year dental and oral health students did four-week rural placements at Latrobe Community Health Service in Gippsland or Goulburn Valley Health in Shepparton, and were encouraged to stay over weekends.

Travel to a rural placement, or to an urban clinic when you are on call, can be reimbursed, but travel to regular urban placements cannot. A trip home to Melbourne during a rural placement is at your own cost. Faculty-wide rules allocate placements as close as possible to your term address, usually within 90 minutes' travel each way. For advice on a rural placement, the faculty points students to the University's Going Rural Health team.

In its 2025 review the ADC reported that under the 2026 calendar one rural rotation would be cut to three weeks, interrupted by a four-week break. It also raised concerns that rural placements were inadequate, that a site had been lost and that links with local community clinics lacked coordination. It recommended a review of rural travel and accommodation, and required the calendar to meet placement-funding rules such as DTERP, the Dental Training Expanding Rural Placement Program. It later recorded that condition as met.

The school's partners page, last updated in May 2024, lists the affiliated health organisations in the areas below, which it says help students move into clinical work. The school's partners also include Northern Territory Aboriginal health organisations, and its 2025 research report describes Melbourne Dental School students contributing to care in North East Arnhem Land.

Research is built into the DDS for every student through a two-year research project. It starts in Year 2 with Dental Research Project 1 (12.5 points), which introduces research principles and methods. You learn to plan a project, including ethics approval and basic data analysis, and develop a proposal in an area of dental, oral or craniofacial research that interests you. It builds on research skills from Professional Practice 1.

The school offers internal grants through its Research Committee to cover expenses for curriculum-related research projects, with your supervisor's support. External grants and a student travel award are open by application, and some DDS students have presented their projects at conferences.

After graduating, you can specialise through the Doctor of Clinical Dentistry, a three-year, full-time, hospital-based course in seven specialties: endodontics, oral medicine, orthodontics, paediatric dentistry, periodontics, prosthodontics and special needs dentistry. Research careers are open through a Master of Philosophy, a PhD or a research fellowship.

The school works from three sites. Two are in Carlton: the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne building at 720 Swanston Street and MOHTEC at 723 Swanston Street. The third is the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute at 30 Flemington Road, Parkville. The school itself is on the fourth floor of the hospital building, where you get a locker for things you cannot take into clinics and can book a ground-floor common room. Card access to each site is set according to your course.

MOHTEC opened in 2012. It houses a pre-clinical simulation laboratory, a haptic virtual reality simulation laboratory, where the simulators give feedback through touch, and the Melbourne Dental Clinic. The clinic has 12 general dental chairs alongside specialist chairs on Level 1, a sterilising facility on site and an imaging service on the ground floor.

At the dental hospital, upgrades announced in 2024 and due to finish in 2025 included new dental chairs and more cameras and instruments. New X-ray arms in the teaching clinics were to give one X-ray unit for every two chairs, up from two per 16.

In 2026 the ADC recorded that the school had met its condition on having enough reliable simulation chairs for the larger Year 1 and 2 classes. You also need your own laptop for all classes, meeting the school's minimum specifications, and you buy your own instrument kit.

Every year level starts with its own orientation. In your first semester, a student-led mentorship program pairs you with senior DDS students, and the Melbourne Dental Students' Society (MDSS) runs professional development, social events, and career and specialty nights. The faculty's MDHS Student Hub helps with pre-placement checks, wellbeing, mentoring programs and Indigenous student success.

In the final year you can join the faculty's mentoring program. A mentor profiled in 2024 advises final-year DDS students on job applications, choosing a practice that supports new graduates, and their health. One of his mentees met him every month or two. In 2022 the school also described a Dental Clinical Mentoring Program: six online case sessions in groups of eight to ten with two mentors. Three came in the final year and three six months after graduating.

The school's Lecturer in First Nations Health teaches cultural safety and provides pastoral care for First Nations students. Career counselling and alumni networking events are available, and the course page describes placement support before, during and after each placement. Dental Practitioner Support, a national health and wellbeing service, is available around the clock to dental students as well as practitioners.