Monitoring

Frequency: As required

Education providers must notify the ADC in writing, as soon as possible, of a change to any part of an accredited program that could potentially impact the program’s ability to meet the Standards. This includes, but is not limited to, changes in curriculum, staffing, clinical exposure for students, or other resources. Where possible, the change should be reported to us in advance of its occurrence.

It is the responsibility of the Accreditation Committee to determine if what is reported is a major change and warrants a re-assessment of the program’s accreditation status. Re-assessment of the accreditation status can take the form of a desktop evaluation or a visit from an Accreditation Team.

Frequency: Annually

All accredited program providers must complete and submit an annual report to the ADC for each accredited program. The annual report must be submitted using our pro-forma.

Annual reports help us track developments in accredited programs and monitor continued compliance with the Standards. They are reviewed internally by the ADC Secretariat and are considered by the Accreditation Committee.

A monitoring report is prepared for the Accreditation Committee following an analysis of all the annual reports.

Frequency: Periodic

We regularly review data from a range of external sources on dental practitioner programs accredited by the ADC. This is used to inform our process or prompt future investigations of programs.

Frequency: Periodic

We gather data from newly registered dental practitioners to obtain qualitative feedback on their education, clinical experience, and other areas related to their education and training.

Frequency: Ongoing

We regularly monitor relevant publications and website for updates on recruitment, student information, proposed changes to programs, and new program offerings.

Frequency: Ongoing

The ADC liaises with a range of stakeholders in the accreditation process including regulators, profession and representative bodies, and other health professions.

Through these relationships we aim to monitor the performance of education providers and programs. We will formally notify providers in the event information obtained by the ADC warrants further investigation. Further monitoring of the program may be required. If this occurs the ADC will use one of our other monitoring activities.

Frequency: As arises

In the event the ADC is made aware of a matter which may post a significant risk to a program’s ability to meet the Standards we may conduct an out-of-cycle monitoring review. This review may be an accreditation visit, a paper-based review, or a combination of both.

We may conduct a thematic review of an issue, or number of issues, within the dental profession that are relevant to compliance with the Standards and/or to the quality improvement of programs. Depending on the theme these reviews may be reviewed against all providers, or a subset of providers.

The ADC Board may also choose the review theme based on:

• significant matters brought to the Board’s attention by key stakeholders,
• matters of significant public concern regarding the dental profession, or
• common issues that are revealed through an analysis of accreditation reports or decisions and would benefit from further review.

An example of this may be where the ADC decides to review admission policies for specialist programs if a number of specialist societies and/or academies raise significant concerns in this area. Another example is a review of the teaching of adult scope in oral health therapy programs to address a lack of public understanding in this area.

We do not perform thematic reviews of matters that are not related to the Standards. For example, matters to do with workforce participation by dental practitioner graduates.