The Aberdeen (Graduate Dentistry) Dentistry course

Aberdeen designed this course for people who have already been to university. It builds on the study skills you bring and expects you to take charge of much of your own learning. Teaching is planned around patients as people, so you think about how they feel and what their lives are like, not only the treatment they need. You are also asked to reflect on your own clinical work from an early stage.

The sciences are not a separate first stage. A course called Applied Medical and Dental Sciences runs in every year next to the clinical courses, so the science connects to the patients you are treating. Your timetable and teaching materials live on MyBDS, the course's own online learning site. You may be asked to listen to a podcast or read ahead before a live session, and there are online quizzes and discussion boards.

The balance shifts over the four years. Early on, much of your learning happens in teaching sessions and the clinical skills lab. By years 3 and 4, the course catalogue describes the non-restorative subjects, such as children's dentistry, orthodontics and oral surgery, as heavily based on clinical treatment sessions. Much of what you learn then comes from treating patients under supervision.

You are taught by, and watch, dental professionals from primary care, such as high-street practices, and from secondary care, such as hospital specialists. NHS Education for Scotland (NES), which trains NHS staff, contributes to some sessions. So do the dental protection organisations, which give dentists legal advice and indemnity, and the GDC itself.

According to the Anatomy department's teaching page, anatomy in your first year (BDS2) is taught jointly by Institute of Dentistry staff and the university's Anatomy department. You have the lectures at the dental school and the practical classes in the teaching laboratories of the Anatomy Facility in the Suttie Centre, on the same campus. The teaching covers every region of the body, with most emphasis on the head, neck and chest.

Anatomy comes back in the clinical teaching too. The first-year local anaesthesia teaching in Clinical Dentistry 2 (DE2070) covers the anatomy of the mouth alongside the reasons for giving anaesthetic. The Anatomy Facility also has a 3D virtual anatomy resource.

Your anatomy knowledge is examined in an Objective Structured Practical Examination (OSPE) in Anatomy and Oral Biology (DE2066). An OSPE is a practical exam in which you move round a series of timed stations, answering questions on the material set out at each one.

You begin with practical training in the clinical skills lab, then start treating patients in the second term of your first year. Training in the clinical skills lab carries on into year 2, alongside your regular clinics.

Local anaesthesia is taught and assessed in the first year. It covers infiltration injections, which numb the area around a tooth, and nerve block injections, which numb a larger area supplied by one nerve. You then use these techniques in the patient clinics.

Many of your patients are adults and children who are not registered with an NHS dentist. They volunteer through the Institute and their treatment is free. Each person first attends an assessment clinic with an experienced clinician, who decides whether their needs suit student care. Some are not accepted because the work needed is too complex for students.

Once accepted, a patient is booked with a student. Appointments last 60 to 90 minutes depending on how experienced the student is, because students work more slowly and their work has to be checked. An experienced senior clinician supervises every student clinic, and all the clinicians and clinical nurses are registered with the GDC.

When the GDC inspected in 2019, the Institute's clinics ran at one clinical supervisor to five students, which the inspectors judged sufficient. There was one dental nurse to every two students in the Institute's clinics and one per student at the outreach clinics. Responsibility then builds year by year, from restorative clinics to full, complex cases in your final year.

You are examined in several formats. Written papers include single best answer questions and clinical scenario papers. Practical and clinical exams include the anatomy OSPE, Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) and Structured Clinical Objective Testing (SCOT). In the final year these come together in an Integrated Structured Clinical Examination (ISCE) and an assessment of cases you have treated.

Each year's dental courses are assessed together through a small set of integrated assessments, rather than an exam for every course. In year 1 these are the anatomy OSPE and the single best answer paper. In years 2 and 3 they are a clinical scenario paper, an OSCE and clinical scenario reports. In year 4 they are the ISCE and a clinical scenario paper.

Before you can sit end-of-course assessments, the Dental Progress Committee must confirm that you have done all the required teaching and activities and grant you a class certificate. You normally get at most two attempts at the assessment for each course in a year, and resits happen within the same academic year. You must pass everything to move up a year.

Across the whole course you are normally allowed one repeat year, although you are entitled to repeat the final year even if you have already repeated another. You must usually finish within five calendar years of first registering, not counting approved time out. The BDS can be awarded with Honours or with Commendation. Students who leave early may receive a Certificate or Diploma of Higher Education (Dentistry) or a Bachelor of Dental Science (B Dent Sci), but none of these lets you register as a dentist.

Your clinical work is also tracked continuously. When the GDC inspected in 2019, students logged every procedure on LiftUpp, a digital system in which the supervising clinician records the treatment, how complex it was, and the student's communication and professionalism. A paper Clinical Skills Passport recorded the skills each student had been signed off in. It could be withdrawn after a concern, until the student completed extra training, and the Institute planned to move it online from 2020/21.

• Single best answer (SBA): multiple-choice questions in which you pick the best of several plausible options.
• Clinical scenario papers: written exams built around clinical scenarios, testing how you would apply your knowledge to a patient.
• OSPE: a practical exam used for anatomy and oral biology, with timed stations.
• OSCE: the station-based clinical exam you sit in years 2 and 3 (OSCE 2 and OSCE 3), testing clinical and communication skills.
• Structured Clinical Objective Testing (SCOT): named by the university alongside OSCEs as one of the ways your clinical skills are assessed at set stages.
• ISCE: the final-year clinical exam, which combines skills from across the course.

For most of the course you are based in one building. All clinical skills teaching, dental laboratory teaching and patient clinics are compulsory and take place at Aberdeen Dental Hospital and the Institute of Dentistry on the Foresterhill Health Campus. Your written and practical exams are held there or elsewhere on the same campus.

In the later years you also spend time with members of the Oral and Maxillofacial Department, which treats conditions of the face, jaws and mouth. You also work with colleagues at Aberdeen Health Village, an NHS Grampian community health centre in Aberdeen city centre whose services include dentistry.

Every Aberdeen student spends some time at purpose-built outreach clinics in Elgin, in Moray (NHS Grampian), and in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis (NHS Western Isles). The university's 2026 induction guidance describes short visits from towards the end of year 3 (BDS4) and throughout the final year. While there, you may also watch timetabled specialist clinics.

The arrangements have changed over time. In 2019 the university reported two final-year students' four-week placement at the Western Isles Dental Practice in Stornoway, and the GDC noted plans to replace two-week outreach blocks with a longer final-year period. At that time the Institute had a dedicated Outreach Lead who visited the centres and supported their staff.

The Institute of Dentistry's purpose-built building on Foresterhill holds both teaching space and working dental clinics. It has facilities for oral surgery, a dental accident and emergency service, restorative dentistry, integrated oral care, orthodontics, paediatric dentistry and dental imaging, as well as dental laboratories. Your clinical skills teaching also takes place in the building.

Two other dental services share the site. The Aberdeen Dental Education Centre is a postgraduate dental training centre with its own outreach clinics, and Argyll House has surgeries for NHS Grampian's dental service.

The Suttie Centre for Teaching and Learning in Healthcare is a partnership between the university and NHS Grampian that opened in 2009. It houses a clinical skills centre and the Anatomy Facility where your anatomy practicals take place. You share the campus, the Suttie Centre and the Medical Library with medical and science students. You can also use the Sir Duncan Rice Library at King's College, plus online journals and textbooks.

The course is small enough for staff to know you. At induction you meet your Year Lead and the Institute's administration team. When the GDC inspected in 2019, Year Leads reviewed each student's clinical record every month and reported on every student to the committee that decides on progression.

At that visit, students described staff as approachable and said they felt able to ask for feedback. If a student was not making enough progress, their Year Lead met them to agree a plan to catch up. In the final year, Clinical Mentors each looked after two students and met them regularly each semester to review their progress.