The Birmingham Dentistry course

The course is organised into compulsory modules, each with its own mix of lectures, seminars, small-group tutorials, laboratory work and, later, clinical practice. Every year also includes a professionalism module that carries no credits but must still be taken. Across the five years these build from academic skills in year 1 to preparing for independent practice in year 5.

The balance of your time shifts steadily from the classroom and independent study towards the clinic. The year-by-year section gives the published split for each year, and the typical week section shows the hours behind it.

Course materials, discussion forums and online submission of your work sit on Canvas, the university's virtual learning environment, which you can use at any hour. The school also runs its own e-learning systems, where you set goals and reflect on your progress. You can upload photos of your practical work to see how your technique changes, and staff use the same records to spot early when someone needs extra help.

You also have opportunities to work with qualified and trainee dental nurses, which is practice for working as part of a dental team. The school recently reviewed its curriculum to take account of the Safe Practitioner framework, the GDC's set of learning outcomes and behaviours for dental education, which took effect from 1 August 2025.

Year 2 has the heaviest load of practical work before you meet patients. In the Clinical Skills Suite at the School of Dentistry you spend on average about 7 hours a week on conservative dentistry, which covers fillings and other repairs to teeth. You spend about another 3.5 hours a week on prosthetic dentistry, which here means designing and making partial and full dentures.

Both run for 25 weeks, and you practise gum treatment in simulation as well. Over the year that adds up to 220 hours of practical classes. Alongside it, Behavioural Management and the Foundations of Clinical Practice has 90 hours of lectures, 60 hours of seminars and 120 hours of work-based learning. This is where you learn to take a medical history, give local anaesthetic and take dental X-rays.

From year 3 most of your week is spent in clinic. Introduction to Clinical Practice alone includes around 300 hours of face-to-face clinical teaching over the year. By year 5, Advanced Clinical Practice lists 400 hours of work-based learning, which means treating patients under supervision.

Anatomy starts in term 1 of year 1 with Body Systems, a 40-credit module on the digestive, kidney, hormone, heart and lung systems. It uses lectures, small-group tutorials and plastinated models, which are real body parts preserved with plastic. The aim is for you to understand how a patient's general health affects their mouth and their dental treatment.

Head and neck anatomy then has its own module, Craniofacial Anatomy, worth 40 credits and taught in term 2. Craniofacial means the skull and face, so this is where you learn the structures a dentist works among every day. The module pays close attention to the nerves and blood vessels you need to understand for giving local anaesthetic and for oral surgery.

You learn from prosected specimens, which are body parts that staff have dissected in advance, so you study the structures rather than dissecting them yourself. This happens in teaching rooms licensed by the Human Tissue Authority, which regulates the use of human tissue. Alongside the specimens you use bones, anatomical models, medical scans and living anatomy, where you find structures on real people.

You also use Anatomage, an interactive virtual dissection system, the Complete Anatomy software and online dissection videos. The module lists 37 hours of lectures, 52 hours of tutorials, 18 hours of practical classes and 43 hours of work-based learning, with about 250 hours of independent study.

Craniofacial Anatomy is assessed half by a 1.5-hour short-answer paper and half by an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). In an OSCE you move round a circuit of short, timed stations, each testing one task or piece of knowledge.

If you want to dissect for yourself, the Clinical Anatomy MSci intercalated degree, described below, includes full-body dissection.

You are on clinic from year 1, though not yet as the dentist. In term 2, dental nurses teach you infection control and how the dental chair and instruments work, and you practise examining the face and mouth on each other.

You then spend two sessions shadowing a senior clinician and ten sessions assisting at the chairside. There you do the dental nurse's job for students in years 3 to 5 and for hygienists. Up to six first-year students join each session. The sessions span new patient assessments, fillings, root canal treatment, dentures, gum care and general dental practice clinics.

Year 2 prepares you through simulation, and you must pass the gateway for each procedure before you do it on a real person. Your own patient care begins in the summer term of year 2.

Your patients then stay with you. You look after a group of patients through years 3, 4 and 5, planning and carrying out all the dental care each one needs. This teaches you to organise treatment and see its long-term effects. The school works with its NHS partners to keep a steady supply of suitable patients, and staff can assign extra ones if you need a particular kind of case.

Supervision is closest at the start. At first one supervising dentist looks after three or four students, and the ratio loosens as you progress. Clinic staff can see which students need more support and how complex each booked procedure is, and they adjust staffing to match. Morning safety huddles, short team briefings on clinic, are used to share lessons from any incidents.

Your patients come through Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Members of the public refer themselves, are screened for suitability, and then receive free treatment from students in appointments of two to three hours. Student clinics do not offer implants, tooth whitening, complex root canal treatment, complex crown and bridge work or treatment under sedation.

You are assessed through written exams, coursework, OSCEs and continuous assessment, where tutors grade your practical and clinical work session by session. At the start of each module you are told how and when it will be assessed. You get feedback within four weeks, and particularly detailed feedback on any exam you fail.

Written exams use several formats. In multiple choice questions (MCQs) you pick the right answer from a list. Single best answer questions (SBAs) are similar, but several options are plausible and you choose the best one. Short answer questions (SAQs) need a brief written answer. A structured oral test is a spoken exam in which examiners work through set questions with you.

Gateways are the skills checks you must pass before you may carry out each type of procedure on patients. When one is assessed, you carry out the whole procedure from start to finish, having practised it several times first. Most gateways, such as taking a history, examining the mouth, giving local anaesthetic, taking X-rays and infection control, can be retaken as often as needed. You cannot treat patients until you pass them.

The Class II filling gateway in year 2 is the exception. A Class II filling repairs a cavity that reaches the side of a back tooth, where it touches its neighbour. You have four attempts in total, and at the fourth the external examiner, an assessor from outside the university, is present. If you fail all four, you fail the module and are asked to leave the BDS.

Your progress is reviewed through the year. Gateway Boards weigh your clinical numbers against the complexity of your cases, your attendance, staff feedback and core skills such as infection control. There are also two check-in points each year. You are graded on professionalism too. After every clinical session you must write a reflection in CAFS within seven days, or your account is locked and the programme team is told.

Everything feeds into a sign-off at the end of each year, and you must meet every requirement to move up. Students who are struggling get a tailored plan with extra teaching, but those who still fall short may be given an education plan or asked to repeat the year. Year 5 Advanced Clinical Practice has no standard resit, so failing it means repeating the final year.

• Year 1: written exams and coursework in the science modules, an SAQ paper and an OSCE in anatomy, and a one-hour online quiz on your introduction to clinic.
• Year 2: the Gateway to Patient Care OSCE, worth half of Behavioural Management and the Foundations of Clinical Practice. Actors play patients at some stations to test communication, professionalism and ethics, and other stations test charting (recording the state of each tooth) and core clinical skills.
• Year 2 also brings a communication role-play assessment, an MCQ paper on X-rays and dental disease, a 2-hour exam on dental materials and continuous assessment of your phantom head work.
• Year 3: Human Diseases has a 2-hour exam of 100 SBA questions, which you must pass to move into year 4. It also has three case studies on patients you have seen who have other medical conditions. Restorative Dentistry has a structured oral test worth half the module, and Introduction to Clinical Practice has an OSCE worth half.
• Year 4: Clinical Patient Care combines continuous assessment of your clinical work (34 per cent), an OSCE (33 per cent) and a 2-hour paper of ten SAQs (33 per cent). Oral Pathology has a 2-hour exam of 50 MCQs and 10 SAQs.
• Final BDS Part 1, in January of year 5, is 40 per cent of finals. It has a 3-hour written paper of five long-answer questions built around clinical scenarios, and a 3-hour OSCE. You must pass it to sit Part 2.
• Final BDS Part 2, the clinical part in April, is 60 per cent. Examiners question you on up to two cases from a portfolio of patients you have treated yourself. You also get 30 minutes to study the records of an unseen adult case and an unseen child case, then discuss your diagnosis and treatment plan with two examiners.
• Within each part of finals a strong mark can make up for a slightly weaker one, but the written and clinical parts must each be passed in their own right. If you fail Part 1 you can resit in May, and some students who narrowly fail Part 2 can resit in June.

Your main clinical base in every year is Birmingham Dental Hospital at 5 Mill Pool Way in Edgbaston, in the south of the city. It is run by Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the school's NHS partner for patient care. Student clinics run in the hospital itself, in the same building as most of your teaching.

Some teaching is at the Medical School on the main university campus, about a mile away. The year 3 Human Diseases module is taught largely there, in lectures and small groups. In December and January of year 4 you go back for sessions on taking the medical history of patients who have other health conditions.

The trust tells patients that student clinics run in three blocks: late September to early December, late January to Easter, and Easter to late July, with two weeks off over Easter. Appointments are on weekdays between 9am and 5pm, so the clinical years run from autumn well into the summer.

In years 4 and 5 you also treat adults and children at outreach clinics. These are clinics away from the dental hospital, in the community dental service in the West Midlands. Each outreach placement starts with an induction where local supervisors review your CAFS record with you. Outreach staff record and assess your work in the same system, so outreach cases count towards your progress.

In year 4 you spend a week on placement in an acute hospital in the West Midlands. It is part of the medicine and surgery strand of Clinical Patient Care, which also includes visits to hospitals to examine patients.

You also observe in the oral and maxillofacial surgery department of a local hospital. This specialty, often shortened to MaxFax, treats conditions of the face, jaws and mouth, and the school has a close working relationship with the department.

There are two points in the course where you follow your own interests. The first is the Individually Tailored Component, which fills the last four weeks of the summer term in year 3. It carries no credits but is compulsory.

You choose one of two options. You can plan and carry out a small research project on any topic, dental or not, and write it up in a report of up to 2,000 words. Or you can spend the time on extra clinical experience tailored to what you need. You then write a report of up to 1,500 words, including a critical review of one published research paper.

The second comes after finals in year 5, in the Transition to Independent Practice module. You choose from a range of study options outside the core course. Places on each are limited, so you give your preferences and are allocated from them. Some options are clinical and some less so, and some general dental practice clinics stay open so you can finish treating your patients.

Seminars in the same module prepare you for qualifying. They cover the limits of what each member of the dental team may do, why you need indemnity (cover against claims from patients) and how to lead a dental team.

Intercalation means taking a year out of your dentistry degree to study for an extra degree in a related subject, then returning to the course. At Birmingham it is optional, and you need to meet academic criteria showing that you are doing well on your course.

The Clinical Anatomy MSci is open to dental students who are in year 2 of the BDS, so you would take it between years 2 and 3. It includes full-body dissection. Dental students are advised to talk to the programme lead before applying, both for this degree and for the Medical Sciences MSci.

The College of Medicine and Health currently offers the options below, and says the list may change as it adds more. You can also apply to intercalate at another university, which needs an approved leave of absence from Birmingham.

• BA Medical Humanities
• BMedSc Medical Science (Birmingham students only)
• MSci Medical Sciences
• MSci Clinical Anatomy
• MSci Health Management and Leadership
• BSc Human Neuroscience (Birmingham students only)
• BSc Sport, Exercise and Health Science
• Year in Computer Science
• Year in Civic Leadership

The Birmingham Dental Hospital and School of Dentistry opened in 2016 on the site of the old BBC Pebble Mill studios. It cost £50 million and was opened by the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh. One wing holds the NHS dental services, and the other holds the teaching and research space used by more than 600 undergraduate and postgraduate students and trainees.

Inside you use a computerised phantom head laboratory, a virtual simulation suite, dedicated training clinics, laboratories built for the school, lecture theatres, study spaces and a computer cluster. The hospital's own clinics cover walk-in emergency care, restorative dentistry, oral surgery, oral medicine, orthodontics and children's dentistry.

Dentistry has a long history in the city. There has been a dental hospital in Birmingham since 1858. The university has been able to award the BDS, and the higher MDS degree, since it was founded in 1900.

You are assigned a personal academic tutor who follows your progress through the course. CAFS sets a minimum number of meetings with your tutor or Head of Firm, and staff follow up if you do not attend. Your Head of Firm is a second person to go to about both clinical and personal worries.

The school has its own wellbeing team based in the Dental Hospital. The Student Services Centre in the Medical School, about a mile away, runs drop-ins with a Wellbeing Assistant from 9am to 5pm on weekdays. If you need more, it books a follow-up with a Wellbeing Officer or year tutor. You can book telephone appointments, which helps when you are on placement, and there are phone lines for problems outside working hours.

If illness or personal problems affect an assessment, you can apply for extenuating circumstances with evidence, and a panel of academics decides. If your claim is accepted, your next attempt counts as a first attempt. Staff will also talk through a leave of absence where that makes more sense, and plan your return with you.

The Birmingham University Dental Students Society, known as BUDSS, links students across all five years. It offers mentoring from students in the senior years, sports teams and a social calendar that includes a Dental Ball.