The Cardiff Dentistry course

Cardiff uses a mix of teaching methods rather than one single approach. You meet lectures, small-group seminars and tutorials, individual teaching from supervisors on clinic, practical classes, problem-solving exercises and online learning. The school also expects a substantial amount of self-directed study. Each unit comes with a topic or module guide that sets out what every session should teach you.

Year 1 lays the science foundations, taught partly in the School of Dentistry and partly in the university's School of Biosciences, while you start basic skills in the simulation suite. From year 2 onwards most of your teaching is in the School of Dentistry. The balance then shifts from lectures and simulation towards treating patients, until year 5 is mainly clinics and outreach placements.

Simulation does not stop once patients arrive. In year 4 you have simulation training in minor oral surgery and in advanced crowns and similar restorations that cover the outside of a tooth. Year 5 still includes work in the simulation suite, and simulation is also used to train you to manage medical emergencies.

You are taught to work as part of a team. Group activities, shared patients and interprofessional teaching with other dental professions are built into the course, and you are expected to reflect on your own work in your ePortfolio throughout.

In year 1 you study dental anatomy, which is the structure of the teeth and mouth, alongside physiology and the diseases that affect the mouth and teeth. This part of the course is shared between the School of Dentistry and the School of Biosciences.

The School of Biosciences houses the Wales Centre for Anatomical Education, which teaches around 2,000 undergraduates from many different courses. The centre says it offers cadaveric dissection, meaning learning from the bodies of people who chose to donate them, to science, medical and dental students, alongside tutorials and online learning. Its pages describe its teaching across all of these courses rather than the BDS in particular.

Before you treat anyone, you must pass gateway assessments in infection control and in the clinical skills set for your year. In year 2 you first learn the clinic routines and equipment in sessions with no patients. Your first patient comes in the summer term, when you examine patients and plan their treatment but give only preventive advice or a professional clean to remove plaque and tartar. After that your own list of patients grows through years 3 to 5.

Patients treated by students are screened first to check their needs suit student care, and they sign a form agreeing to treatment by a student. The NHS tells patients at the dental hospital that each visit takes one to two hours, longer than at an ordinary practice. You wear a name badge, and staff roles are shown by uniform colour, so patients know who everyone is.

Supervision depends on the task. The GDC's 2025 report recorded at most one supervisor to eight students on restorative clinics, which cover fillings, crowns and other repairs, and usually one to six. It recorded one to two for routine extractions, one to one for surgical extractions, and one to three on children's and orthodontic clinics.

You attend children's clinics weekly in years 3 and 4 and fortnightly in year 5. Children are referred from a consultant's clinic to a student-led children's clinic, where you complete a treatment plan the consultant, a senior hospital specialist, has already approved. You do this under supervision, and you can also watch and help in the children's emergency clinic.

Children's dentistry is the one area the GDC asked Cardiff to improve. Students told the 2025 inspectors they saw too few child patients, partly because appointments were missed, and had limited chances to follow a child through a full course of care. The GDC rated this requirement partly met.

In reply, Cardiff set out a new route for local practices to refer suitable children to students and a new student treatment-planning clinic. A patient system called Salud 2 (Titanium) would let the hospital assign children to the same student over time. It also described a new rural placement in Powys. These were plans in 2025, so ask at an open day how they are working.

Cardiff assesses you against the four areas the GDC sets for new dental professionals: clinical knowledge and skills, interpersonal skills, professionalism and managing yourself. Across the course you meet written exams and assignments, case reports, practical skills tests, projects, portfolios, online tests, oral presentations and clinical oral exams, where an examiner questions you about a patient or case.

Some assessments act as gates. You must pass gateway assessments before treating patients, and each term an Academic and Professional Progression panel reviews how you are doing. Each year group gets an assessment and feedback handbook that lists every test for the year, so you can plan ahead. Feedback and concerns logged on your ePortfolio also feed into these reviews.

The details that follow come from the school's final-year assessment handbook for 2023/24, so treat them as a guide while the course is under review. That year, Final BDS covered years 4 and 5 and made up 60% of the degree result. Written papers made up 45% of Final BDS, projects and coursework 25%, case reports 15% and vivas on unseen patient cases 15%.

The written part was two three-hour papers, one of them single best answer questions, where you pick the best of several options. The research project, of 4,000 to 6,000 words, carried 86% of the project marks and a long-running orthodontic project 14%. Project titles were confirmed in January of year 4 and the write-up was due early in year 5.

Clinical finals were three written case reports on patients you had treated, plus three vivas on patient cases you had not seen before. The adult and child cases each carried 35% of the viva marks and the oral disease case 30%. Degrees were awarded as Honours (70% or above), Commendation (60 to 69%) or Pass (50 to 59%).

Before clinical finals you had to complete all required competencies. Earlier, you had to pass a year 4 Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), a circuit of timed stations that each test a set task, and a bridge-preparation test to move into year 5. In the bridge test you shape teeth to hold a bridge, a false tooth fixed to its neighbours. Neither test counted towards the final mark.

Much of your early clinical work happens at the University Dental Hospital in Cardiff. Outreach placements then take you into primary care, meaning everyday dental services in the community rather than a specialist hospital. The course page describes these placements from year 4, in and around Cardiff and across Wales, and the GDC's 2025 report also lists one in year 3.

The GDC report names two main outreach sites where students treat adults: St David's Hospital in Canton, Cardiff, and the clinic at Ysbyty Cwm Cynon (Cynon Valley Hospital) in Mountain Ash. The health board lists both as part of the University Dental Hospital's service. In year 5 you also treat children with the Community Dental Service in south and north Wales, and observe in hospital maxillofacial units.

On placement an experienced clinical lead supports you. Since September 2024 a Director of Student Placements has overseen all outreach placements, with site visits normally once a year and remote check-ins every six months. You fill in a feedback questionnaire after each placement, and placement staff join the school's training days so that teaching and marking stay consistent across sites.

Cardiff's 2025 response to the GDC described a new placement in Powys, where students would work in rural dental settings within the General Dental Service, meaning ordinary NHS high-street dentistry. Students would treat both adults and children there. Cardiff presented this as a planned change, so ask at an open day how it is running.

The simulation suite is where you learn hands-on skills. Cardiff's course page describes a £2.2 million suite with phantom heads, intra-oral scanners, which take a 3D digital impression of the teeth, and 3D printing.

The University Dental Hospital houses the clinics where students treat patients. Between them, the school's three Dental Education Clinics and four specialised clinics include oral surgery, an examination and emergency clinic, a children's clinic, an orthodontic clinic and adult clinical practice. Student clinics run on weekdays during working hours, and you learn to use the hospital's computer system for booking patients and keeping electronic records.

The School of Dentistry building on the Heath Park campus has two lecture theatres, teaching and research laboratories and a dental library with a large collection of books and journals.

You have a personal tutor for pastoral support throughout the course. Supervisors, topic leads and year leads give individual academic help, and on placement a clinical lead looks after you. If you fail an assessment, the relevant lead gives you extra guidance and remediation before the resit.

The Cardiff Dental Student Society (CDSS) is run by students and brings together dental surgery, hygiene and therapy students. In first year you are given dental parents, older students who mentor you. The society organises social events, sports days with other dental schools and charity work, and students run outreach such as oral health talks in local schools and hygiene packs for homeless people in Cardiff.

The school has an inclusive curriculum policy. Reasonable adjustments to most assessments can be made on the advice of the university's Student Support Unit, as long as GDC requirements are still met. You can discuss likely adjustments with the school before you apply. A school committee called WIDER leads work on wellbeing, inclusivity, diversity, equity and respect.

Students help shape the course through student-staff panels, monthly student representative meetings and consultations on the curriculum and timetable. The school's policy on how students raise concerns about patient safety was written with the student body.