The Baltic dental programme at the Faculty of Dentistry of The Karolinska Institute: first evaluation.

In 1992, The Faculty of Dentistry of The Karolinska Institute (KI) introduced a dental undergraduate programme specifically for Baltic students. Initiative for this programme came from both the Ministries of Health in Estonia and Latvia and a Member's Bill in the Swedish Committee for Foreign Affairs. The first 10 students were admitted in January 1992, and in 1994, a further 8 students were accepted. The main objective is to train Baltic students according to the Scandinavian model of dental education, in order to facilitate a positive development in dentistry in these countries. Candidates for the programme, dental students in Latvia or Estonia who had completed several preclinical years, were interviewed and tested in their home countries by a Swedish Admissions Committee. The curriculum comprises 7 semesters at the School of Dentistry, and includes complementary courses in basic science, preventive dentistry, and theoretical and practical courses in all fields of clinical dentistry. The students work with increasing independence, treating patients with a great variety of oral diseases and from different age groups. A course in Informatics is central and forms a base for a research-based assignment in collaboration with the respective home universities. The Baltic Programme is the first time KI has designed and implemented a specially tailored dental undergraduate curriculum in English for a selected group of foreign undergraduates. The students have proved to be ambitious and industrious, with very high academic standards. Their results in the written examinations were equal to or better than those of the home students. Of the 9 students who to date have completed the course, all are working as dentists in their respective countries and 6 are associated with their university.