Association for Dental Education in Europe

Learning together to improve oral health and quality of life

Plenary session 2: Reimagining dentistry within the inter professional healthcare team

Thursday, 21st August 2025 - 09:00 to 10:30
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Timezone: 

Dublin (IST, UTC+1)

Venue: 

Dargan Auditorium TCDBS

Session type: 
Type 1: Organised, planned and delivered by the ADEE
Session synopsis: 
Reimagining dentistry within the inter professional healthcare team

Oral Health Professionals are increasingly recognised as vital members of multidisciplinary healthcare teams, contributing to a holistic approach to patient care. Preparing dental students to be effective members of a multidisciplinary team involves fostering collaboration, communication, and understanding of diverse roles within healthcare. This includes training them to work alongside other dental professionals as well as with broader healthcare teams. Interprofessional education (IPE) plays a key role in this process, helping students develop respect for other professions and build strong teamwork skills.

This plenary session will look at the past, present and future of IPE in dental education. The panel of speakers will explore why IPE is of key importance to prepare dental graduates to be collaborative practice-ready graduates. Dr Jensen will provide a brief history of the evolution of IPE in health professions education, outline examples of IPE frameworks, explore the patient’s role in IPE and the importance of patient involvement in IPE. Dr Reidy Murphy will give an overview of current IPE practice in the USA, discuss case studies and the approach taken in the Harvard School of Dental Science and consider the development of competencies needed to work effectively as part of an interprofessional team. Finally, Dr McGowan will look to the future direction of IPE and the factors that need to be considered as IPE programmes are grown and further developed.

Programme: 
08:50 Delegates and award recipients are asked to take their seats in the Dargan auditorium  

09:00

Welcome to Plenary 2

09:10

Panel discussion: Reimagining dentistry within the inter professional healthcare team

09:50

Delegate Question and answer session 

10:05

ADEE Awards 2025

  • Mature Career Educators 2025 Awards 
  • The Oral B Inter-professional Educator Award

10:25

Closing Remarks

Chair: 

Brian O’Connell

Professor of Restorative Dentistry
Trinity College Dublin

Brian O’Connell is currently Dean of Health Sciences at Trinity College, Dublin, with a special interest biomedical education. He co-leads the oral health component of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), in addition to research on treatment outcomes and the use of new technology in oral health care. Professor O’Connell is a core member of the European Platform for Better Oral Health, and President-Elect of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR).

Ina Schüler

Head of Section of Preventive and Paediatric Dentistry
Friedrich-Schiller Universitat Jena

Priv.-Doz. Dr Ina Schüler is head of Section of Preventive and Paediatric Dentistry at Jena University Hospital, Germany. She finished her Habilitation in 2018 at Jena University Hospital and the Master of Medical Education (MME-D) in 2017 at University Heidelberg. Her special educational research interests are Feedback, Assessment, Chairside Teaching and Entrustable Professional Activities in Dentistry. Ina's medical resaerch focusses on oral health in patients with special healthcare needs.

Speakers: 

Christine Riedy, PhD, MPH

Delta Dental of Massachusetts Associate Professor in Oral Public Health and Epidemiology
Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Dr. Riedy is the Delta Dental of Massachusetts Associate Professor in Oral Public Health and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. She is a behavioral scientist by training and discipline director for behavioral sciences in the HSDM predoctoral dental curriculum. Dr. Riedy received her master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology and an MPH in health services from the University of Washington, Seattle. She was the lead PI of the Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health, one of six academic units for primary care training enhancements previously funded by the federal government’s Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW) and now sited under HSDM’s Initiative to Integrate Oral Health and Medicine. She is also the PI of the National Center for Equitable Care for Elders (NCECE), a national training and technical assistance partner with HRSA’s Bureau of Primary Health Care since 2017. More recently, she is the director of HRSA/BHW funded predoctoral and postdoctoral training programs for enhancing geriatric content in dental training and training general dentistry and dental public health providers on caring for vulnerable populations in rural communities, particularly older adults, respectively. Dr. Riedy has expertise in behavioral intervention research and research methodology including quantitative and qualitative methodology and mixed methods research. Her early research focused on oral health disparities and behavioral strategies to improve oral health. More recently, she has focused on the integration of oral health and medicine (and vice versa) through interprofessional educational training and models of clinical practice.

Emer McGowan

Assistant Professor in Interprofessional Education
School of Medicine Trinity College The University of Dublin

Emer McGowan is an Assistant Professor in Interprofessional Education in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Dr McGowan is a physiotherapist by background. Her main research interests are health professions education, refugee health, leadership in healthcare, and leadership development. She was awarded her PhD in 2017 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship researching leadership and leadership development in healthcare at Trinity College Dublin. Dr McGowan leads the interprofessional education programme for students across disciplines in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Along with her colleagues, she is developing the IPE Strategic Plan 2026-2030 to expand and develop innovative learning opportunities for health sciences students in Trinity.

Catrine Buck Jensen

Associate Professor/RN Bachelor program of nursing
UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Catrine Buck Jensen is a Registered Nurse (RN) and an Associate Professor (Ph.d) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She holds her main position in the Bachelor’s program in nursing at UiT as well as a part-time position as an RN in Tromsø Municipality. Catrine’s research interests are interprofessional education and supervision, the patient perspective in interprofessional education, and active patient involvement in health professions education. Since 2022, she has been chairing the Norwegian Network for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (NIPEC) and is a part of the Nordic Interprofessional Network (NIPNET).

Ronald Gorter

Associate Professor
Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam

Ronald Gorter, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA), The Netherlands. He is former Director of Education at ACTA.

Ronald is ADEE Executive, represents ADEE on the Platform for Better Oral Health in Europe, and is Editor in Chief of the European Journal for Dental Education. He is (co-)author of about hundred Dutch and international professional and scientific publications.