Commentary: Necessity of Blending Dental Education Into the Mainstream of Medical Education as a Specialty Area: Advocating for a Reform Idea Aiming to Promote the Health System Performance in Iran

Abstract

With the knowledge we have today about the concept of health and its complexities and determinants, the separation between medical and dental education (DE) does not seem reasonable anymore. Dentistry has mainly developed based on a mechanical approach to treat the related problems. This makes the efforts for reorientation of dental care (DC) toward a preventive approach, relying upon dentists as the chief oral health (OH)-related workforce, inefficient. This is while effective strategies have been identified for prevention, as the key to simultaneously control the burden and costs of the ubiquitous oral diseases, at both individual and population levels without dentists. We think that approaching OH as an integral part of the general well-being requires fundamental changes in the structure of OH system including a substantial revision in the current situation of dentistry as an autonomous health profession with a separate education from the main body of the medicine. In this short article, we briefly discuss the necessity of blending DE into the mainstream of medical education and actual consideration of dentistry as a medical specialty area. After discussing the subject at two levels (health-care system and national levels), the next sections draw attention to some complementary issues.