Dr. Danilo Magtanong, former chairperson of the UP College of Dentistry’s (UPCD) Department of Clinical Dental Health Sciences (DCDHS), was appointed new UPCD dean by the UP Board of Regents at its July 28, 2016 meeting. He succeeds Dean Vicente Medina who served the college for two terms from January 2010-July 2016.
Dean Magtanong has served the UPCD for several years in various capacities. Apart from being DCDHS chair, he has been a faculty member of the College’s Section of Prosthodontics since 1986 and former head, DCDHS’ Section of Prosthodontics. At the national level, he was a member of Expert Panel for Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) on accreditation of Dental Technology and Dental Hygienist courses. He has served as resource person, panelist, convenor, or facilitator in over a hundred continuing education activities on dental health.
He recalled having proposed six years ago as DCDHS chair a change in the strategy in the clinical training of dental students from the requirement-based system to the patient care-based system. In the proposed system, clinicians work on cases available in the clinics, thus, stresses are minimized.
He said this approach is also congruent to the principle of “learning in context,” a training experience much like the setting in dental students’ future tasks as practitioners.
The new UPCD dean stated that under the patient-based system, students have more opportunities to learn and acquire more skills in caring for patients’ needs. In the requirement-based training, clinicians usually discontinue working on a patient who needs more treatment upon satisfying the numbers required. They will rather work on other cases that they need to accomplish.
Unlike the existing system, the patient care-based clinical training is more conducive in promoting a true culture of learning, according to Dean Magtanong.
The requirement-based system has brought stress and anxieties on the part of the clinicians since they are expected to look for and find their own patients to work on to satisfy the numbers.
Dean Magtanong explained that a change in the training strategies and implementation of the patient care-based program is expected to address the very low graduation rate and attrition problem of the College. He considers the implementation of this new system the biggest challenge and responsibility for the next dean.
He recalled that the patient-based system was approved by the College Council at that time. Unfortunately, it was not implemented. “It is long overdue,” said the new dean.
