Course participants 2009: K. Awasthi, R. Mhaville, D. Duister, U. Habiba, S. Dhume, A. Umanah, A. Ninal, E. Temitope, J. Rebueno-Santos.

Participant Angelica Ninal from the Philippines, (lower row, second from right), wrote about her experience:

We finally have come to the conclusion of our 7 week post graduate course. That ample duration has provided us an insurmountable knowledge that leads us to make feasible plans that we can carry on to our developing home countries.
We started off with Evidence Based Dentistry and Problem Based Learning which is the main foundation to our journey of continued education. This motivates a clear cut learning that sharpens the mind for both the educator and students. On a more practical and clinical side, we learned 'Problem Based Treatment Planning', a holistic approach to better our clinical judgements and most importantly, it creates an open communication that addresses the individual care of the patient. With this new knowledge, my plans will be to lobby to my university to integrate this system of learning into the curriculum combined with the traditional teaching one subject at a time.

Application of a systematic, stepwise approach on a massive scale for me, is 'Community Oral Health'. As a public dental health dentist in my country, this topic has opened my horizon on new knowledge with an open mind and greater possiblities. My plans include to carry on the BPOC ( Basic Package on Oral Care ) program with more focus and efforts in the supervised toothbrushing with AFT ( Affordable Fluoride Toothpaste). Monitoring the performance of not only the kids but also the parents and teachers is essential to the sustainability of this practice of habit forming. Render OUT (Oral Urgent Treatment) with more focus on restorative ART ( Atraumatic Restorative Treatment). Working for an NGO, I'd like to be more active in making proposals and project plans and redirect their focus more on advocacy and capacity building.