The Manchester Dentistry course

The course is built around five themes that run through all five years: human health and disease; the mouth in health and disease; clinical competence; scientific understanding; and team working, communication and reflective practice. Clinical subjects are taught alongside the basic sciences from Year 1. For example, the biology of gum inflammation is taught together with how to examine and start treating a patient's gums.

In Years 1 and 2 your week is anchored by EBL cases and symposia, with anatomy, laboratory and clinical skills classes timed to match your EBL topics. From Year 3 the balance shifts towards clinics, with group learning and symposia running alongside your patient sessions.

Research runs through the course. Besides a research project and a clinical case presentation, you write a Critically Appraised Topic: you pose a clinical question, such as whether water fluoridation prevents tooth decay, and weigh up the published evidence. Finished reviews are added to the school's online database.

The 2024-25 handbook sets out the fixed points of a Year 1 week. There is a symposium every Tuesday from 9am to 11am, your weekly anatomy class and, most weeks, a practical in the Stopford teaching labs. Each EBL case takes about three and a half hours of group time over two weeks, with an assessed group task on the final Friday.

Each week you also work through a worksheet and watch a video before a Fundamentals of Dentistry group session. Topics include tooth decay risk, fluoride, diet, health inequalities and infection control. In Semester 1 there are tooth morphology lectures and practicals.

Later years are organised around clinics. A Year 4 student describing her week on the university's student blog in 2024 had a full patient clinic day every Tuesday, shared with her clinical partner. Wednesday was a teaching day of lectures and a case-based seminar. She was usually timetabled on three days a week, with extra blocks such as oral medicine or oral surgery consultation clinics.

She also described practical sessions on taking blood and inserting cannulas, thin tubes placed in a vein to give fluids or medicines, as part of the medicine and surgery module. Her oral surgery sessions took one of three forms: consultations, simple extractions that students carry out themselves, or assisting with a surgical extraction.

You have a weekly two-hour session in the Stopford Building dissection room with an anatomy demonstrator. A first-year student writing on the university's student blog in 2025 said her first semester spent 11 weeks on the head and neck, the area you will work on as a dentist.

She described the sessions as using prosections: parts of donated bodies that experts have already dissected, so the structures you have studied are laid out in front of you. The university's anatomy teaching page says dissection and prosections form the basis of its teaching, and that dentistry students use the same facilities as medicine, physician associate and bioscience students.

In Year 2 you study the gross anatomy, meaning structures visible to the naked eye, of the thorax, bones and joints, and the nervous system. Histology, the study of tissues under the microscope, is taught online through Blackboard, the university's learning platform, with drop-in help on Zoom.

Manchester introduces you to the clinical environment in your first semester. So before you start, you must show you are not infectious for HIV, hepatitis B and C, and tuberculosis, and pass health screening with Student Occupational Health. Year 1 clinical work is mostly simulated, including a simulated local anaesthetic course. The GDC's 2025 report notes some clinical experience towards the end of Year 1, but treating patients yourself starts in Year 2.

Direct patient contact starts in Year 2, once Occupational Health has issued your Clinical Placement Certificate confirming you are safe to work with patients. That year you also give your first local anaesthetic injection. The first-year student who wrote on the university's student blog in 2025 said Year 2 students practise this on each other. You must pass the phantom-head gateways before any restorative treatment on patients, meaning work that repairs or replaces damaged teeth, such as fillings.

Year 3 opens with a three-week introduction to the clinics before your own restorative sessions start. In Year 4 you treat patients for comprehensive care, planning and carrying out all the treatment each one needs. By Year 5 you assess new patients, deal with emergencies and lead oral surgery sessions.

The GDC looked closely at supervision when it inspected in February 2025. On the main ground floor clinic, the school's policy is one supervisor for every six to eight treatment bays; because students work in pairs, a tutor may oversee up to 16 students. Students and staff told the GDC that one tutor to 20 students was common. Some students said they did not feel competent or supported on clinic, and at times did not feel safe.

Students also said they often relied on graduate teaching assistants for supervision, though these staff are meant to be extra help, not supervisors. Lower-year students struggled to find patients for their milestones, the set assessments of real treatments, and there was no patient coordinator to help. The GDC said that, without its intervention, students would have graduated without enough experience to count as safe beginners, or without the evidence to support that decision. Safe beginner is the GDC's term for a new dentist who is ready to practise safely.

The school's published response says it has since recruited more tutors, assigned tutors to zones of the clinic and added senior staff at busy times. It also planned to appoint a patient coordinator by early 2026.

You are assessed through multiple choice questions, short-answer papers, projects, presentations of patients you have treated with an oral exam called a viva, peer assessment and reflective journals. There are also Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), circuits of timed stations that each test a practical or communication skill in front of an examiner.

Each year's main exams are normally in May or June, with a second chance in July, and you must pass to move up a year. In Years 1 and 2, coursework marks also come from the assessed final session of each EBL case. Failing at the second attempt ends your studies unless the Student Progress Committee gives special permission.

Clinical progress is tracked separately. Gateways test skills in the clinical skills room, and milestones are observed or written assessments of real treatments. These, your tutors' grades for each patient and any professionalism cards, green for good conduct and amber or red for concerns, are logged on an electronic system called CAFS.

Before each exam period a sign-up meeting checks your attendance, clinical progress and professionalism; if you are not signed up, you cannot sit the exams. The school expects 100% attendance, and in Year 1 lateness counts as absence.

The Year 5 Final Examination has a short-answer written paper and a viva of three clinical case examinations. The vivas are recorded, and external examiners from outside the university review any fail grades. Students who fail may need up to 12 months of further training before trying again. Honours go to students with consistently high marks at the first attempt.

Assessment has changed since the GDC's 2025 inspection, which found clinical grades were applied inconsistently and OSCE marks could hide weak areas. Now you must score 50% on a station to pass it and pass at least half the stations. A revised clinical grading scale has applied since September 2025, with Satisfactory as the pass grade for gateways.

Your main base is the University Dental Hospital of Manchester, part of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, on the university campus. Around 90,000 adults and children are treated there each year, across services including oral and maxillofacial surgery, oral medicine, orthodontics, paediatric dentistry and restorative dentistry.

A new teaching clinic, the Advanced Dental Education Centre, has space for up to 16 dental chairs. The school told the GDC it passed its inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates health services in England, at the end of September 2025 and would open soon after. The school says it adds to, rather than replaces, space on the main clinic, and that extra tutors were recruited to run it. The GDC was unsure how much it would ease supervision problems, given the size of the year group.

Hospital placements are in Manchester: the Year 4 medicine and surgery week at North Manchester General Hospital, and Year 5 maxillofacial surgery days and intravenous sedation at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Some Year 5 general anaesthetic lists are at Trafford General Hospital.

Outreach takes you into the community. In Year 3 you may spend four to six weeks at an NHS community dental service, which sits between high-street practice and hospital and treats adults and children with more complex needs. Year 4 outreach is at Bupa Dental Care practices. When the GDC visited in February 2024, two Bupa centres were in use and five practices, each with two chairs, were being added during 2024.

While Bupa places were being phased in, the handbook gave priority to students with stronger results in the assessments that count. You pay travel to community clinics in Greater Manchester from Year 4, with no discounted campus parking. The GDC's 2025 report says the school tries to place you somewhere easy to reach, lets you ask to swap and offers bursaries towards outreach travel.

The same report found students' experience of treating children was low compared with other dental schools, and some students finished their children's dentistry rotation very close to graduation. The handbook warns that the Year 4 placement in the paediatric (children's dentistry) department depends on availability and may move to Year 5 because of a backlog from COVID.

In Year 4 you can apply for an international exchange with the Henry M Goldman School of Dental Medicine in Boston, USA, or Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, Japan. The school explains the conditions during the year.

Some extra clinical opportunities are also by application. A student writing on the university's student blog in 2024 was selected for paediatric outreach at Morris Dental Care in Oldham. She spent three Mondays treating under-16s, including fissure sealants to protect back teeth and small fillings.

Intercalating is optional. You take one extra year, between Years 2 and 3 or between Years 3 and 4, to earn a BSc or a master's degree, then return to the BDS. For a BSc you join the final year of a Manchester honours degree.

Current options are BSc Biomedical Sciences, Genetics, Global Health and Medical Biochemistry, or MA Humanitarianism and Conflict Response, MSc International Disaster Management and MSc Molecular Pathology of Cancer. Most have a large research component.

A place depends on outstanding performance in Years 1 and 2, staff availability and demand. You enquire through your Academic Year Lead in Year 2 or 3. If you pay your own fees you do so for the extra year too; if your local authority pays, check with it.

At the dental hospital, undergraduate treatment happens mainly on the ground floor restorative clinic, a large open-plan space. The clinical skills classroom with its phantom heads is on the first floor, and the second floor holds the orthodontic and paediatric clinics, the children's sedation suite and a prayer room.

The Division of Dentistry is on the ground floor of the Coupland 3 Building, where most dental staff are based. The Stopford Building has the dissection room and teaching labs.

In your first week you meet a peer mentor, a more senior student, who sees you and a small group of classmates four or five times in Year 1. Your EBL tutor is also your academic adviser and meets you one to one several times a year. You can ask to change adviser through the Undergraduate Pastoral Officer.

At least twice a year you have a Student Development Review with your year lead, covering results, clinical progress and wellbeing. If there are concerns, you are set specific targets and may be referred to the Student Progress Committee, whose main aim is to support you.

The School of Medical Sciences has a Student Support and Wellbeing team for personal, health, disability and money problems, including Hardship Fund applications. Student hubs in the Stopford Building and Coupland 3 answer everyday questions.