Oral Health University of Melbourne

Overview

Overview

The Oral Health program at University of Melbourne has combined vocational outcomes in hygiene and therapy.

• Hygiene: Dental hygienists provide dental care for all age groups. They examine and record the nature and severity of periodontal conditions, and clean, scale and root-plane teeth.
• Therapy: Dental therapists provide dental care for children and adolescents. They examine oral and dental conditions, restore and conserve permanent and deciduous teeth, perform extractions of deciduous teeth, and remove calculus. Under recent changes dental therapists are also able to provide care to adults under certain circumstances.

In the first two years, you’ll undertake clinical work at the Royal Dental Hospital. In the final year, clinical rotations are undertaken at community clinics in metropolitan and rural locations.

The course has four main components:

• Dental science: Study subjects that provide a theoretical background to the procedures used in providing dental care, including: the structure and function of normal and abnormal tissues of the body, and principles of treatment of disease.

• Social science and preventive dentistry: Take on subjects concerned with preventing dental disease in the community. Community studies and oral health promotion are a major feature of this component, but it also includes ethics, psychology, sociology and research methods.
• Clinical dentistry: Here you'll study subjects related to oral health therapy practice (which are common to dental hygienists' and dental therapists' clinical practice). Subjects span from infection control and instrumentation through to dental material and examination procedures.

• Vocational clinical practice: Take on study involving clinical management of dental decay in children, adolescents and young adults. Clinical work is undertaken at the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne in all years of the course and at other metropolitan and rural community health centres in the final year of the course.

Careers

As a graduate, you'll find employment in 

• private practices
• public hospitals
• health services

You'll also find work in oral health research and teaching.