【Education】
With a goal of “nurturing competent healthcare professionals able to practice patient-centered holistic medicine,” which is a philosophy of Hiroshima University Hospital, our department educates students in the Faculty of Dentistry about medical interviews and communication skills required for making an accurate diagnosis. Recently, there has been a need for advanced medical care provided through interprofessional collaboration utilizing multiple specialties. In fact, however, the lack of a common language and shared awareness between dental and medical professionals makes it difficult for the specialized aspects of the oral cavity to be understood by medical professionals. Based on such recognition, our department also places emphasis on education for interprofessional collaboration with the aim of promoting cooperation between medical and dental professionals.
 Furthermore, our department totally manages dental trainees to smoothly implement the clinical training system introduced as a compulsory subject since 2006. Our department provides two clinical training programs, including those with training conducted only at the university hospital and those with training conducted 5 months at local dental institutions separately from the university hospital. Either program requires trainees to acquire basic training items, and allows them to receive specialized training at their desire.

【Research】
Various evaluations have been made to build a better postgraduate dental clinical training system. Our department also conducts questionnaire surveys with dental trainees and instructors, while analyzing training effects based on the results of clinical examinations such as OSCE. Through these research activities, our department gives feedback to each training facility to reduce differences among the facilities in terms of training-related educational systems such as the number of cases and the techniques experienced by each trainee and the number of clinical tests, personal support systems such as cooperation among dental trainees and between dental trainees and instructors as well as support from co-medicals, and environmental systems for infection prevention, medical safety, etc.