The Plymouth Dentistry course

The curriculum is a spiral: topics come back each year in more depth, and science, clinical skills and professional development are taught together rather than in separate blocks. The programme specification says that since September 2025 it has followed the GDC's Safe Practitioner framework, published in 2023. The framework sets out the skills and behaviours you must show by the time you qualify, so it shapes what you are taught and assessed on.

Each year is worth 120 credits, split into full-year modules that run from September to July. Years 4 and 5 are set at level 7, the same academic level as a master's degree. Dental science is taught as Integrated Dental Science in years 1 and 2, then as Applied Dental Knowledge in years 3 to 5. Alongside it sit Clinical Dental Practice, Professional Development and Lifelong Learning, and Inter-Professional Engagement. The clinical module grows from 40 credits in year 1 to 70 in year 5.

The course page also lists Interprofessional Learning 1, 2 and 3 as core modules in years 1 to 3. This strand is shared with other Plymouth health and social care courses, such as nursing, midwifery and social work, and students from different professions learn together and about each other's roles.

Most of your learning happens in small groups. In enquiry-based learning your group works through patient scenarios set out in study guides and works out the knowledge and clinical reasoning each case needs. You then fill the gaps through tutorials, e-learning, plenaries (large-group sessions led by experts in different fields) and private study, which is built into the timetable. You are expected to manage a good share of your own learning.

The balance shifts as the course goes on. Years 1 and 2 lay the scientific and technical groundwork, and by the end of year 2 you have been introduced to the core clinical and technical skills a dentist needs. Year 3 brings more self-directed project work, and clinical time then grows to three days a week in year 4 and four in year 5.

The school publishes one example week, for year 2. It mixes group learning, science practicals, simulation and two full days of treating patients.

• Six plenaries, large-group sessions with experts in different fields.
• Two days of clinical work in a healthcare setting in the community.
• Two structured enquiry-based learning sessions with your small group.
• Workshops and simulated dental sessions in the SDLE.
• Three interactive life sciences practicals on the biomedical sciences.
• Extra clinical skills training in the Clinical Skills Resource Centre, covering anything from basic life support to giving an injection into a muscle.

There is no separate anatomy module. Anatomy is part of the science you study in Integrated Dental Science in years 1 and 2, and it returns as applied knowledge in later years. The programme specification maps the GDC outcome on dental, oral, head and face, and general anatomy to assessments from year 1 to year 5.

Your Science for Dentistry practicals take place in the Life Sciences Resource Centre (LSRC) in the Portland Square Building, which serves several of the university's health courses. It has Anatomage tables, large touchscreens on which you build or virtually dissect body structures and link them to scans, tissue seen under the microscope and how the body works. You can use the tables whenever the centre is open, not only in timetabled sessions.

The centre also has anatomical models that fit together like 3D jigsaws, and imaging simulators that give realistic ultrasound pictures with body landmarks. A team of people act as surface anatomy models, and the centre describes them as its students' first patients. Working with them, you learn to find landmarks on the body by touch while practising how to talk to a patient.

You first go into the clinics in term 2 of year 1, where the course page says you build your communication skills under close supervision from dentists. Everything you do there is controlled by the Patient Safety Pathway, a set of checks every year 1 student goes through. A review in mid-February decides whether you can attend clinic induction, your introduction to how the clinics run.

A second review in early May gives you a level, 1 or 2, and you are told your level before you start working with patients. Level 1 needs two of your three hepatitis B vaccinations, a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) criminal record check, and clearance from Occupational Health, the service that screens students' health before patient work.

You also complete training in safeguarding, which means protecting children and vulnerable adults from harm. You are trained in Prevent too, the government programme that teaches health staff to spot people at risk of being drawn into terrorism. All clinic work depends on Occupational Health clearing you for exposure-prone procedures, where an injury to you could expose a patient's open tissues to your blood. This clearance includes blood tests for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

At level 1 you can attend clinic workshops, use the clinic phantom heads and practise X-rays in simulation. With patients, you can assist at the chairside, working as a dental nurse for senior students. You can also triage patients, meaning assess how urgently they need care, under the direct supervision of a GDC-registered professional.

Level 2 needs passes in skills-lab assessments on clinical examination and clinical IT, plus an assessment on decontamination, the cleaning and sterilising of instruments. It adds full clinical examinations and preventive care, such as oral hygiene instruction, advice on diet, alcohol and smoking, and fluoride application. Each simple treatment then needs its own year 1 skills test first. These cover fissure sealants (protective coatings in the grooves of back teeth), scaling to remove hardened deposits, and tooth-coloured fillings in back teeth.

When the GDC inspected the course in 2019, students said they enjoyed managing their own list of patients. The inspectors noted that students took responsibility for each patient's whole course of care rather than doing isolated procedures, and that students worked in pairs on clinic.

Knowledge tests change as you progress. In years 1 and 2, Integrated Dental Science tests recall and understanding of the core sciences. From year 3, Applied Dental Knowledge gives you clinical information and asks you to weigh up the options and justify the best course of action. It is pitched at the standard expected of a new dentist in general practice. The programme specification calls it a progress test, a type of exam set at graduate level that students sit at intervals through a course.

Clinical skills are checked before and during patient work. In year 1 you pass skills-lab competency assessments before each new treatment on patients, and the clinical modules include proficiency and capability assessments of your work on clinic.

Your clinical finals sit in Clinical Dental Practice 5, which has four parts. They are reports on your specialist visits, an OSCE-style exam with unseen cases, exit case presentations, and reaching minimum standards in clinical proficiency and capability assessments. The programme specification calls the unseen-case exam the Unseen Case Safe Practitioner Examination. In year 5 you also sit the final Applied Dental Knowledge progress test and submit a critical appraisal report.

There is no compensation, so a strong mark in one module cannot make up for a fail in another. If you fail any one module you repeat the whole year, and failing more than one can mean being asked to leave. You can repeat any one year only once, and no more than two different years in total. You normally have seven years to finish, and formal exams fall at set points that may not match the university's usual exam periods.

The standard award is the BDS. A BDS with Honours is normally open only to students who passed every year at the first attempt. You also need an excellent grade in year 5 in two areas: the case presentation or the unseen-case exam, and the progress test or a critical appraisal report. If you leave after passing year 3, you receive a Bachelor of Oral Health Studies (Hons), which does not let you register with the GDC.

When the GDC inspected in 2019, supervisors graded students and wrote feedback after every patient contact on the school's own electronic record. If a supervisor saw a procedure fall below standard, the student stopped doing it on clinic until a remediation session within two weeks and a retest in the skills lab.

• Inter-Professional Engagement: a report and reflective paper in year 1; a poster, reflective paper and assessed symposium presentation in year 2; a clinical audit in year 4.
• Professional development: written critical reflections, discussed with your Academic Tutor each term.
• Year 5 research skills: a critical appraisal report on research relevant to primary care dentistry.

Your clinical training takes place in the school's Dental Education Facilities. They were designed and built for dental students and are linked into local NHS dental care, so you see both routine and specialist cases in a primary care setting. The university's locations page sets out where each year of the course is taught.

In years 1 and 2 you are taught at Portland Square on the main campus and at the Devonport and Derriford clinics in Plymouth. In year 3 you still live in Plymouth but travel to the Exeter clinic two days a week, on transport the school provides. In year 4 you move to Truro for the whole academic year. Year 5 brings you back to Plymouth, at Derriford and the city-centre practice.

The City Centre Dental Education Practice at 71 New George Street opened on 9 February 2026. Final-year BDS and dental therapy and hygiene students use its 13 single surgeries on rotation, treating patients alongside specialists and dentists in foundation training. It also offers urgent care, booked by appointment rather than as walk-ins.

The Faculty of Health lists the initial outlay for travel and accommodation on placement among the costs that tuition fees do not cover. Budget for a year's rent in Truro when you plan your finances.

Beyond the dental clinics, the university has agreements with local NHS trusts for specialist visits in dental and medical hospital services. The agreements set out the learning outcomes, teaching hours, supervision and assessment for each placement. In years 3 and 4 you learn about medical conditions relevant to dentistry in patient-based demonstrations, hospital outpatient clinics and emergency departments.

Intercalating means taking a year out of your dental degree to study for a separate qualification, then returning. At Plymouth a small number of selected students do this between years 3 and 4, taking a one-year MSc in the university's research laboratories in Plymouth. The school names the MSc Biomedical Science as the intercalation option for dental students.

You then rejoin the course for year 4. Because the degree normally has to be finished within seven years, any change to that limit caused by intercalating is decided case by case by the faculty.

The largest SDLE is in the Portland Square Building on the main campus. It spreads across three rooms and holds 68 phantom heads, set out in pods that copy a real dental surgery. Across Plymouth, Exeter and Truro the university has 93 phantom heads in total.

Portland Square also houses the Life Sciences Resource Centre and a library. The Clinical Skills Resource Centre, in the John Bull Building at Plymouth Science Park, is where you do extra clinical skills training such as basic life support. Library and e-learning resources, including electronic journals, are available both on the main campus and at the clinics.

Digital dentistry has become part of clinical teaching. In 2025/26 PDSE introduced intraoral scanners, which take a digital 3D scan of the teeth in place of a traditional impression in putty-like material. Eight were in use at Derriford and Truro, with five more due to be introduced across all sites.

Each student has an Academic Tutor. You meet every term to review your progress on professionalism across the course, using the written critical reflections you prepare for the Professional Development and Lifelong Learning module.

Students have a say in how the course runs. EBL group representatives meet year leads regularly, a Student Staff Liaison Committee collects feedback from every year group, and student representatives sit on the school's Dental Committee.

If you have a disability or health condition, the school asks the university's Disability Inclusion Services and Health and Wellbeing Service to assess the support you need. Where possible it makes reasonable adjustments to your programme.

The Peninsula Dental Society, known as DentSoc, offers revision sessions, volunteering and social events through the year, including a Christmas dinner and a summer ball.