We need Competency-based Dental Education
– Dr.Vijayaraghavan, VC, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai
The 16th Graduation Day of Sri Ramakrishna Dental College and Hospital was held on Monday (5.4.2021) at the SNR Auditorium. 86 UG students and 5 PG students received their degree certificates from Dr.P.V.Vijayaraghavan, Vice Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, the Chief Guest in the presence of D.Lakshminarayanaswamy, Managing Trustee, SNR Sons Charitable Trust and Dr. L. Deepanandan, Principal, SRDCH. 6 accomplished students also received Gold Medals from the Chief Guest. The Managing Trustee and the Chief Guest later addressed the gathering.
Choose your path, Move with Confidence – D.Lakshminarayanaswamy
D.Lakshminarayanaswamy said that SRDCH was started in the year 2000 with the objective to deliver quality dental education and dental care to society. He said “at our colleges we place utmost importance to imbibe students with ethics and values that can help them to succeed in personal and professional life. Ethics and values are indispensable for the development of a person and more importantly the nation at large.”
The values he spoke about include Development of components of knowledge, emotional, behavioral and personal stability, health, obedience, social order, honesty and maturity.
Without ethics, human conduct becomes unfilled and education becomes less useful. He opined that Knowledge with Ethics leads to holistic development. He shared that success is a measure decided by others, whereas satisfaction is measure decided by us. He advised them to choose their path and move with confidence.
New Dental Colleges should be opened in Rural Areas – Dr.Vijayaraghavan
Dr.Vijayaraghavan said that the present generation students are tech savvy and expect the Teacher- Student relationship to be Guru-Shisya but sort of a Consumer-Provider relationship. The students’ expectations are very professional these days, he opined. He said that there is a need to move from the traditional curricula to student centric competency based dental education.
Competency is habitual and judicious, and in dental college education competency should be in terms of Communication Skill, Dental Clinical Knowledge, Technical Skills, Emotions, Values, Clinical Reasoning and Art of Reflection.
At the occasion he also underlined that there is a regional inequality in the location of dental schools, most of them are at economically better-off places, while there is a scarcity of them in the northern and Eastern areas.
He said there are more number of Dental Graduates in the country but they are not equally distributed in the regions. There is a big rural-urban divide, he stressed. “In spite of the quality workforce that is available with us, the most fundamental oral health education or the simple interventions are not available to a vast majority of rural population”, he opined.
He wished that more number of rural dental educational institutions are opened in the rural areas too, and close this rural-urban divide, and also lead ways to qualified Dentists render service where it is needed.