Activity: An individual educational experience such as a lecture, clinic or home study package.
Administrative Authority: The person responsible for the coordination, organisation and dissemination of planned CODE offerings. Typically, it is an employee of the provider.
Advisory Committee: The committee must provide advice, peer review and overall direction for the programme to the CODE provider.
Commercial Support: The financial support including resources and commodities / products for the expenses and needs associated with the CODE activity.
Continuing Oral & Dental Education: Consists of educational activities designed to review existing concepts and techniques, to convey information beyond the basic dental education and to update knowledge on advances in scientific, clinical and non-clinical practice related subject matter, including evidence based dentistry.
The objective is to improve the knowledge, skills and ability of the individual to provide the highest quality of service to the public and professional. Continuing Oral & Dental Education should strengthen the habits of critical enquiry and balanced judgement that denote the truly professional and scientific person and should make it possible for new knowledge to be incorporated into the practice of dentistry.
Continuing Oral & Dental Education programmes are designed for part time enrollment and are usually of short duration, although longer programmes with structured, sequential curricula may also be included within this.
Course: A type of continuing education activity; intended for a structured, formal educational experience.
Credit hour: The time period devoted solely to CODE based on actual number of contact hours.The minimum credit is given for 1 hour.
Educational Methods: The structured planned format for delivering educational material to the learner.
Electronically mediated participation course: Long term CODE courses including in -office practice of taught techniques in the absence of direct supervision.
Goal: A broad range statement on CODE Programmes.
Learning Objectives: Expected learner outcomes of a specific CODE educational experience, states behavioural or action oriented terms for the participant.
Lecturer / Author / Instructor / Faculty member / Speaker: Persons responsible for designing, development and implementing of specific CODE material for intended participation.
Needs Assessment: Process for identifying the overall needs, interests and requirements of intended participants based on data study and relevant sources.
Programme Planning: The total process of designing and developing CODE activities. All steps inclusive of needs assessment, selection of topics, defining learning objectives, allocation of lecturer/faculty and developing of evaluation mechanisms.
Provider: An agency (institution or organisation) that is responsible for organising, administering, publicizing, presenting and keeping records for the Continuing Oral & Dental Education programme.
The CODE provider assumes both the professional and fiscal responsibility for the conduct and quality of the programme.The CODE provider contracts or agrees with another organisation for institution to provide facilities, lecturer / author or support provided that the organisation meets the standards and criteria for recognition. The CODE provider remains responsible for the overall educational quality of the continuing education activity.
Recognition: Recognition is conferred upon CODE providers or sponsoring organisations responsible for conducting a CODE Programme in compliance with the standards put forth by ACODE.
Comprehensive Patient care: The system of patient care in which individual dental professionals or providers, examine and evaluate patients; develop and prescribe a treatment plan; perform the majority of care required, including care in several disciplines of dentistry; refer patients to recognized dental specialists as appropriate; and assume responsibility for ensuring through appropriate controls and monitoring that the patient has received total oral care.
Competencies: Written statements describing the levels of knowledge, skills and values expected of graduates.
Competent: The levels of knowledge, skills and values required by the new graduates to begin independent, unsupervised dental practice.
Cultural competence: Having the ability to provide care to patients with diverse backgrounds, values, beliefs and behaviors, including tailoring delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural, and linguistic needs. Cultural competence training includes the development of a skill set for more effective provider-patient communication and stresses the importance of understanding the relationship between diversity of culture, values, beliefs, behaviour and language and the needs of patients.
Dimensions of Diversity: The dimensions of diversity include: structural, curriculum and institutional climate.
Structural: Structural diversity also referred to as compositional diversity, focuses on the numerical distribution of dental professionals, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds in a programme or institution.
Curriculum: Curriculum diversity also referred to as classroom diversity, covers both the diversity-related curricular content that promote shared learning and the integration of skills, insights, and experiences of diverse groups in all academic settings, including distance learning.
Institutional Climate: Institutional climate also referred to as interactional diversity, focuses on the general environment created in programmes and institutions that support diversity as a core value and provide opportunities for informal learning among diverse peers.
Evidence-based dentistry (EBD): An approach to oral health care that requires the judicious integration of systematic assessments of clinically relevant scientific evidence, relating to the patient's oral and medical condition and history, with the dentist's clinical expertise and the patient's treatment needs and preferences.
Examples of evidence to demonstrate compliance include: Desirable condition, practice or documentation indicating the freedom or liberty to follow a suggested alternative.
Must: Indicates an imperative need or a duty; an essential or indispensable item; mandatory. In-depth: A thorough knowledge of concepts and theories for the purpose of critical analysis and the synthesis of more complete understanding (highest level of knowledge).
Instruction: Describes any teaching, lesson, rule or precept; details of procedure; directives.
Intent: Intent statements are presented to provide clarification to dental education programmes in the application of and in connection with compliance with the Accreditation standards for dental education programmes. The statements of intent set forth some of the reasons and purposes for the particular standards.
Patients with special needs: Those patients whose medical, physical, psychological, cognitive or social situations make it necessary to consider a wide range of assessment and care options in order to provide dental treatment. These individuals include, but are not limited to, people with developmental disabilities, cognitive impairment, complex medical problems, significant physical limitations, and the vulnerable elderly.
Predoctoral: Denotes training leading to the BDS or MDS degree.
Quality assurance: A cycle of PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT that involves setting goals, determining outcomes, and collecting data in an ongoing and systematic manner to measure attainment of goals and outcomes. The final step in quality assurance involves identification and implementation of corrective measures designed to strengthen the programme.
Service learning: A structured experience with specific learning objectives that combines community service with academic preparation. Dental professionals engaged in service learning learn about their roles as dental professions through provision of patient care and related services in response to community-based problems.
Should: Indicates an expectation.
Standard: Offers a rule or basis of comparison established in measuring or judging capacity, quantity, quality, content and value; criterion used as a model or pattern.