U.K. Health Minister Lord Howe has officially opened the University of Portsmouth Dental Academy, according to the university. An event on February 2 marked the launch of the new $14.6 million facility.
The dental academy is an education partnership between the University of Portsmouth and King's College London Dental Institute (KCLDI). Every year 80 final year dental students from KCLDI will join dental hygiene, therapy, and dental nursing students from Portsmouth to train and work together in teams.
Supervised by tutors, the students provide dental treatment and advice to patients from Portsmouth, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight. The arrangements enable student dental care professionals and dentists to experience working as a team just as they will in practice.
Historically, the Portsmouth area has had significant oral health needs that the dental academy, working in partnership with others, will help to address, the university said. It aims to specifically target those people who have been previously considered hard to reach, including children, the elderly, and those who, for various reasons, have not had regular access to a National Health Service dentist.
The new building more than doubles the scale of the facility, with the addition of an east wing that includes 20 dental chairs (adding to the existing 26), radiography facilities, and a state-of-the-art instrument decontamination center, as well as a suite of seminar rooms that will be used for continuing professional development activities.
The facility will serve about 2,000 new patients annually, the university said.
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