DENTISTRY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 13

DENTISTRY

SERIOUS POSITION REVEALED

PROPOSAL TO REMOVE SCHOOL

FROM DUNEDIN.

(IX TILIUAFS.—tUII ifUCUTIOI.) / AUCKLAND, 24th January. A. recommendation that the Dental School be transferred from Dunedin to Auckland is the chief feature of the Dental Commission's report, which says that conclusive evidence was placed before the Commission showing that graduates have not received, and students are not receiving,. sufficient training in operative or mechanical dentistry at Dunedin, and that the situation was a very serious one. This is attributed partly to lack of proper accommodation and facilities (a 40 per cent, deficiency), and lack' of clinical material (30 per cent, deficiency). Regulations are recommended for a four years' course, involving students reaching a higher standard 'at entry, enabling more time to be devoted "to operative and mechanical dentistry. As long as the Dental School is situated at Dunedin it will be; necessary to arrange for students to obtain clinical practice at hospitals and other centres where there is more clinical material. One recommendation is that if no Dental School is to be begun elsewhere than in Donedin for the next ten yars, the Beverley site should be'used and a building planned at a -cost of £38,(300. The Commission is satisfied that there is ample clinical material at Auckland, probably more than at the other three centres combined.

Dr. Hunter, in a minority report^ cays that in view of the small number likely to seek' entrance to /the dental profession, together with the limited population, a second school would mean an unwarrantable expenditure. To transfer the school to Auckland would mean "the.loss of such facilities as the teaching: of anatomy, dissecting, and physiology. He enggests bo arranging the curriculum that students could take the first year in any foig centre; and six months of the last year together; with V>ng vacations in centres where there is more clinical material than at Dunedin.