How does the next generation of dentists learn? In episode #136 of the podcast 'Queens & Sons of Dentistry', Valeria Sabet, a dentist from Berlin as well as co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Wisdom, reports on how the founding of what she states is the only learning platform for dentistry students came about – and what her path reveals about the state of dental teaching.
Expensive books and empty library shelves
The starting point was an experience of her own: when Sabet was facing her state examination, the first cohorts were already studying under the new licensing regulations – and suddenly all the books she would have needed had been borrowed from the library by the first-year students. A specialist book last printed in 2002 quickly costs 300 euros second-hand, according to her account; anyone needing ten such books might as well throw in the insolvency application straight away. On top of this comes a structural problem: universities that lack money, funding or research still teach in part according to very old pedagogical ideas, as Sabet describes it. Out of this gap arose the idea of a platform that connects students and gives them the opportunity to contribute to their own teaching.
An 'Amboss for dental students': structure and model
Wisdom – the name alludes to the wisdom tooth – sees itself as what Amboss is for human medicine: an online learning platform on which students can learn the entire theory from the first semester through to the state examination. In development since 2021 and, at the time of recording, live for a good year, the platform has around 6,000 users according to Sabet – roughly a third of dentistry students in the German-speaking region – and has received the first campus licence from a university. In terms of content, the offering works like a Wikipedia article: first comes the definition the examiner wants to hear, then the more in-depth material; underlined terms such as 'rubber dam' lead by a click to the next study card. Almost 9,000 past questions from the multiple-choice catalogues of many universities have been incorporated. Sabet describes the subscription model as 'a bit like Spotify': it can be added monthly before an examination and cancelled again during the semester break. For image material the platform cooperates with the industry – on the principle that the industry may not change teaching, but may improve it. Her example: a purple impression reveals to everyone anyway which company it comes from – so the manufacturer's genuine, good image might as well be used.
New licensing regulations, new content
Sabet's remarks on the consequences of the new licensing regulations are of particular interest. Since dental technology is no longer taught to the previous extent, the entitlement to run an in-house laboratory, which was previously acquired as part of the degree, no longer applies. She therefore considers forecasts that there will be more and more in-house laboratories in future to be questionable. At the same time, modern topics are becoming examination-relevant: in her words, the platform covers content from CAD/CAM through to AI-guided implantology – Sabet herself was already asked about implantology in her prosthodontics state examination in 2021.
Thought through internationally
The modernisation of teaching does not stop at national borders: according to Sabet, Wisdom has concluded its first contracts in the direction of India, Brazil and Mexico. Her reasoning: dental teaching does not only need modernising in Germany, and ultimately a filling is a filling in every country – the materials differ, the definition of caries is the same worldwide. Dentists from abroad who wish to work in Germany and can prepare themselves with the platform also benefit from this.
The sobering start to working life
Sabet finds clear words for the economic start to working life. Assistant dentists are poorly paid for what they do – and not merely in subjective terms: colleagues who qualified in 2021 as she did started on around 2,100 euros gross for a 40-hour week – after six years of study and with considerable responsibility. In Berlin that is enough neither for a one-room flat nor to live on, especially as BAföG student funding has to be repaid from a certain point onwards. Sabet herself, incidentally, was still treating patients until four weeks before the recording; with the international expansion, however, practice work and morning and evening calls with universities could no longer be reconciled in the long term. Her conclusion in the podcast: she can give more to dentistry by modernising teaching and opening up access for students to modern topics that outdated university teaching cannot cover.