Accreditation Results(Accreditation Results for School of Dental Education)

Kagoshima University,
Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Dentistry

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: NationalLocation: Kagoshima, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2022
Accreditation Status: accredited（Accreditation Period: April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2030）

Kagoshima University Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Dentistry

Accreditation Resultsfor Kagoshima University Faculty of Dentistry,
Department of Dentistry

Under the philosophy of "Before being a good dental professional, be a good medicalprofessional. Before being a good medical professional, be a good individual,"
Kagoshima University Faculty of Dentistry, the only center of dental education insouthern Kyushu, aims to produce dentists and dental medical educators andresearchers with holistic dentistry expertise, broad knowledge required to contributeto local and global healthcare, and a strong sense of values and mission. Based on theeducational mission established in the Kagoshima University Charter as well as themission and purpose of the Faculty of Dentistry, the dental program has formulated
the clear educational goal of training dental professionals who will serve the needsof the people.
To achieve this educational goal, the Department of Dentistry in 2015
became the nation’s first dentistry program to adopt the Outcome Based Education(OBE) framework. Following the OBE approach, the Department implements acurriculum structured to provide a step-by-step learning process tailored to the levelsof student attainment. Specifically, the curriculum defines twenty-nine competencies
in five competency areas as the learning outcomes students are expected to haveachieved at the time of graduation, and links these competencies to specific courses
to create a performance-level matrix. Furthermore, to realize the educational
objectives of developing dental professionals who practice dental care for all andcontribute to local and global healthcare, the dentistry program offers an advanced
curriculum separate from the core curriculum. Especially notable are the practicaltraining opportunities unique to the region, such as the course in which students join
Accompanying practice for traveling dental care in remote island or work in Dental
clinical practice in remote islands. These courses serve as a good reference for otherdental education institutions in considering how dental care should be provided incommunities lacking dentists, as such communities are expected to increase in thefuture as the nation’s population declines.
The clinical training curriculum is designed to ensure students gain
abundant clinical experience. Clinical practice and participation in care, for example,
students work in various departments on rotation. When a student is assigned to a1

Kagoshima University Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Dentistrydental patient requiring treatment over an extended period, the different departments
work out a schedule that allows the student to experience the entire process from theinitial conversation with the patient on the first visit and making treatment plans toproviding patient counseling, treatment, and maintenance. When developing andrevising the syllabus, the course instructor prepares a lesson improvement plan basedon the feedback received from teachers observing the class and the previous year’s
student survey, and reflects the improvement ideas along with the revision history in
the following year’s syllabus. This is a commendable process for creating andmanaging the syllabus.
Another notable feature is that each faculty member conducts self-study
each year, and the department heads not only evaluate the performance of their teammembers every three years but also publish the evaluation results.
While this review identified a variety of strengths and unique offerings as
described above, there were also a number of areas for improvement. Regarding theclinical training facilities, there is no dental care unit dedicated exclusively to training,and students must share the equipment with the instructor dentist or resident dentists.
It is desirable that clinical trainees be given priority access to the facilities. Anotherarea for improvement concerns the obtaining of individual consent forms for patientcare clinical training. At present the consent form is used only in some departments,
and work on revising the form has been suspended. These issues need to be addressed.
To deal with the issues raised above, the Department of Dentistry isadvised to use the results of this review and continue its self-study efforts forimprovement, further assure and enhance the quality of its dentistry program(bachelor’s program), and develop its unique dentistry education.

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