The Sydney Dental course

Each semester is built around one large unit, such as Introduction to Dentistry or Core Clinical Practice 2, with the seven themes taught side by side inside it. Bioscience, clinical skills, research and professional topics therefore share each week's timetable, as the typical week section shows.

The balance shifts as you go. Year 1 and the first half of Year 2 centre on biosciences, simulation and laboratory work, with clinic sessions in which you mostly observe and assist. From Year 3 the clinical sciences and skills theme grows in prominence alongside the others, and Year 4 turns to patients with complex needs.

Interprofessional learning, about working in teams with other health professions, starts with a Faculty-wide workshop in Year 1. Year 2 brings the Health Collaboration Challenge, a group video task, and Year 3 a patient safety workshop.

The 2026 unit outlines list every timetabled session. Week 2 of Year 1 Semester 1, for example, held a 3-hour denture laboratory and a 3-hour cavity preparation practical. Around them sat a skills studio on learning how to learn, a critical appraisal tutorial, a Faculty-wide interprofessional workshop, a practical on oral bacteria, a tutorial on taste and smell and short seminars. In all, that came to about 24 scheduled hours, including two of self-study.

From Year 3 the week is anchored by rostered 3-hour clinic sessions, with simulation, lectures and workshops around them. The minimum expected workload is 1.5 to 2 hours of study per credit point per week, roughly 480 to 600 hours for each 24-credit-point unit.

The year is long. In the 2026 calendar, Years 1 and 2 started on 2 February, with three pre-semester teaching weeks, and Years 3 and 4 on 19 January. Every year ran to formal exams in late November. A three-week window followed, until the semester break on 21 December, which students must keep free in case they need remediation or extra assessment.

Attendance is compulsory: you must attend at least 90 per cent of required learning activities, including tutorials, workshops, practicals, clinics and assessments, and watching a recording does not count.

Anatomy belongs to the oral and systemic biosciences theme and concentrates on the head and neck, taught alongside tooth morphology (the shape of each tooth), histology (tissues under the microscope) and pathology. In the 2026 timetables, Year 1 Semester 1 opens with an introduction to anatomy and practicals on the skull and vertebral column. Tooth morphology tutorials and a tooth-drawing workshop take you through each group of teeth.

In Semester 2 you study the chest from prosections, specimens already dissected by trained staff, in two sessions on the lungs and the heart. Teaching then moves to dissection practicals: three on the neck and three on the face and parotid (salivary) gland. One learning outcome of the unit is to show professionalism while learning in the anatomy dissection room.

Year 2 continues with dissection of the jaw joint and chewing muscles, the infratemporal fossa (a space deep to the jaw), the cranial cavity and brain, and the orbit (eye socket). You also have practicals on the mouth. Semester 2 adds dissection of the pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box) and tongue, the nose and the ear. Both Year 2 semesters include an anatomy spot test, a practical test of identifying structures. Anatomy is also applied directly, as in a lecture on anatomy for local anaesthesia and a tutorial on how infection spreads through the face and jaws.

Before your first clinic you must complete NSW Health checks, and the University registers you as a dental student with the Dental Board of Australia through AHPRA, at no cost. The 2026 Year 1 timetable included a compulsory orientation day at Sydney Dental Hospital, workshops on infection control, clinical records and taking a patient history, and a briefing for the First Learning Clinics.

In those Year 1 sessions you assist with dental care for patients, and in Semester 2 you take part in patient interviews and dental examinations. Before moving on to each new stage of patient care you must pass barrier clinical skills assessments, which the School treats as a patient safety requirement.

Year 2 Semester 1 adds local anaesthesia and extractions in simulation, with a compulsory competency assessment in local anaesthesia. Most clinic time that semester is observational: integrated observational clinics and radiology clinics at Sydney Dental Hospital, an extraction observation clinic and final-year students' oral surgery sessions.

You first treat patients yourself in Year 2. In Semester 2, Core Clinical Practice 1 places you in integrated clinics, and its outcomes include fillings, first-stage gum treatment and giving local anaesthetic, always under direct supervision. You also work towards assessing patients and planning their treatment with them.

From Year 3 you attend weekly 3-hour clinic sessions mixing general care with specialist clinics. The unit outcomes include root canal treatment on a molar in the simulation clinic and on patients' single- and double-canal teeth, along with extractions and managing dental emergencies.

All treatment by students is directly supervised by registered clinical educators. At the Westmead Centre for Oral Health, senior DMD students in the University General Practice clinic give eligible patients check-ups, gum treatment, fillings, root canal therapy, crowns, bridges, dentures and extractions.

Assessment is longitudinal and integrated: each year has a portfolio-based program of exams and in-class tests, skills assessments, clinical assessments and submitted work, mapped to the seven themes. A Portfolio Advisory Group reviews your progress in each theme and decides whether you progress, and professionalism and attendance count towards that decision.

Most 2026 unit outlines grade the unit as satisfied or failed requirements, but Extramural and Advanced Clinical Practice 1 uses the University's usual grades, from fail to high distinction. The outlines stress that no total mark decides progression: you must reach the expected standard in each individual assessment. Knowledge tests have set pass marks, such as 50 per cent in Foundations of Dentistry 1 and 65 per cent, with 85 per cent for a pass with merit, in Core Clinical Practice 1.

Written exams fall in the formal exam periods, and practical tests in simulation cover cavity preparation, periodontal instrumentation, X-ray technique, root canal treatment and crowns. Year 2 has an integrated bioscience and nutrition OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), listed as a written exam. The School describes its station exams as a circuit of timed stations with models, photographs and X-rays, where you write short answers. Year 3 has an integrated clinic OSCE sat on your own device on campus.

From Year 3, 20-minute vivas test oral medicine, oral pathology, oral surgery and radiology, and later oral surgery alone. In Year 4 the unseen clinical case becomes an oral exam. In the 2026 Semester 2 outline you get 50 minutes to study the case, then give a 10-minute presentation and face a 15-minute viva. Clinical educators assess your clinic work continuously, and you submit a reflective portfolio every semester.

If you fall short, the Portfolio Advisory Group can set remediation, extra tasks or further assessment, and any reassessment is a single attempt. The School's assessment provisions, last amended in 2020, cap a reassessment mark at 50 per cent and rule it out for continuous clinical assessment, professionalism, attendance and clinical experience. Under the rules for students starting from 2026, a failed unit is repeated when next offered, usually a year later, as each unit runs once a year. The 2025 rule, which still covers students who started in 2024 or 2025, meant repeating the whole year.

Accreditation: after a reaccreditation review in August 2024, the ADC accredited the DMD for seven years from 1 January 2025, with three conditions that its 2026 report records as since met. Following concerns raised from December 2025 and a site visit on 25 May 2026, its decision of 24 July 2026 kept the course accredited until 31 December 2031. That decision set seven conditions, with evidence due by 2 October 2026.

• The seven conditions cover supervision at every site and session, academic governance, acting on feedback, equivalent clinical learning across sites, supervisor training and calibration, accurate clinical assessment records and the new paired-student clinical model.
• The 2026 report found inconsistency across sites and cohorts in supervision, patient allocation and the reliability of assessment records. It also found that students are generally considered to reach the expected level of competence by the end of the course, and noted Local Health Districts' positive view of graduates.
• In early October 2026 the ADC's accredited programs list still showed the DMD with conditions; the ADC updates the list once all conditions are met.

Semester 1 of Year 1 is at the Camperdown/Darlington campus. Units from Year 1 Semester 2 to Year 3 are based at Surry Hills, home of Sydney Dental Hospital at 2 Chalmers Street, and Year 4 units at Westmead. Some sessions cross over, such as the Year 2 prosthodontics laboratory at Westmead.

Clinical teaching relies mainly on public dental services run by NSW Local Health Districts (LHDs). The ADC lists the course's campus as the Westmead Centre for Oral Health, at Westmead Hospital in Western Sydney LHD, and Sydney Dental Hospital, part of Sydney LHD. The course page also names Nepean Hospital and Campbelltown Hospital among its clinical connections, and the School names the Nepean Centre for Oral Health.

Official pages describe rural placements differently. The Faculty's placement-partner page says final-year dental students are rostered to a rural partner for eight weeks, working in pairs. They see patients four days a week, in at least two 3-hour sessions a day, with one day for community engagement and rural cultural experience. The 2026 calendar lists four eight-week Year 4 rural rotations between February and October.

The University's September 2026 news says around 50 dental and oral health students volunteer each year. The Year 4 unit pages speak of opportunities for extended rural placements, and the Faculty's rural page lists the dental rural program among options for students interested in rural health. In 2026 dental and oral health students worked in clinics in Bathurst, Mudgee, Warilla, Broken Hill, Ballina, Nowra and Kempsey. The program is supported by a federal grant, with extra NSW Health funding for Broken Hill. Ask the School how places are allocated.

Before any placement you need NSW Health verification, including a national police check and vaccination records, plus first aid and CPR certificates and a Working with Children Check. Dental work includes exposure-prone procedures, in which blood-borne viruses are much more likely to be passed on, so you also make a blood-borne virus declaration. NSW Health verifies it and you renew it every three years. For rural placements with partner organisations, the Faculty says students usually arrange their own accommodation, and it helps them find scholarships and bursaries.

There are two elective units, Electives 1 in Year 3 Semester 2 and Electives 2 in Year 4 Semester 1. They carry no credit points, but completing them is recorded on your transcript. Each offers supervised experience in an area of dentistry you choose, locally, interstate or overseas, to explore a career direction or build particular skills. You can organise your own, with help from the Academic Elective Coordinator. Formal international exchange is not available in the DMD.

The 2026 outlines say you complete two weeks of clinic across Years 3 and 4, during mid-semester breaks: one week in the university hospitals' specialty clinics and one week observing outside them. You reflect on it in a poster of five to seven slides, and with approval a case report can replace a placement you cannot complete. The Clinical Teaching and Leadership Modules are further options, and you can take more than one module if time allows.

The Clinical Teaching Module starts with nine one-hour lectures on teaching, from adult learning to giving feedback. A practicum follows: five 3-hour sessions teaching in Year 1 and Year 2 pre-clinical classes, assessed through a reflection and an interview with a clinical educator. The Leadership Module has eight sessions on topics such as leadership styles, change, career planning and difficult conversations, and your group interviews leaders in dentistry and higher education.

The DMD is awarded at pass grade only, and every unit is prescribed, so there is no Honours stream within it. Research is built in instead through the DMD Project in Year 2. The course page lists the PhD and Master of Philosophy in Medicine and Health as related research degrees.

The Sydney Dental School Simulation Centre opened in October 2023 in the School's Bligh Building, after a $9.4 million investment, and the University said its location reconnects dental students with the Camperdown campus. Alongside its 61 simulation units are extended reality (XR) training and computer-aided design (CAD) planning rooms with eight CAD stations, digital dentistry studios with intraoral and extraoral scanners, and 3D printing and milling machines.

For imaging there is a cone-beam CT unit for 3D X-rays, nine intraoral X-ray units, seven Vistascan scanners and two Leica microscopes.

Sydney Dental Hospital runs a Clinical Dentistry clinic where dental students provide general care, prosthodontics, endodontics, periodontics and restorative treatment. Its specialist clinics cover orthodontics, paediatric dentistry, oral surgery, oral medicine, radiology and special care dentistry, and the Dalarinji Oral Health Clinic serves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Its Level 5 simulation clinic hosted the 2026 Year 4 implant workshop.

At the Westmead Centre for Oral Health, inside Westmead Hospital, the University General Practice clinic occupies Levels 1 and 3, and dental laboratories with 17 technicians support students' work.

Support is built into the assessment system. Each semester you meet a Learning Advisor to review your achievements, and the Portfolio Advisory Group meets at the end of Semester 1 to review progress in each theme. The School's assessment provisions say remediation, academic support to clear up errors and misunderstandings, comes before any reassessment, and you can ask staff for a meeting if you are struggling.

Year 1 skills studios cover learning how to learn and academic writing, and Year 3 has a Mentor Program with sessions on the clinical rosters. After student feedback, Year 1 gained optional, minimally supervised practice sessions in the simulation clinic and extra prosthodontics laboratory sessions.

Final-year portfolios include a wellbeing reflection and a personal wellbeing action plan. Dental Practitioner Support, a national service, offers health and wellbeing support around the clock to dental students as well as practitioners. If you have a disability or health condition, the University's inherent requirements document sets out what dentistry involves, such as working for 2 to 4 hours at a stretch and fine manual dexterity. Disability Services can arrange reasonable adjustments.