Editorial

Over the past 10 years, several changes have been made to the education of health professionals, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, as a result of the Brazilian National Curricular Guidelines (Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais, DCNs) issued in 1992. The DCNs have provided a new foundation for the formation of graduated dentists, so as to prepare these professionals to existing social needs and to a transforming reality by means of a comprehensive education focused on health maintenance.

Worth of note is the fact that, still today, several difficulties associated with the implementation of DCNs are still present. The current scenario is still marked by a closed, inflexible curricular organization, reflecting a fossilization of the restorative/surgical paradigm. Resistance to changing a model often results from a combination of factors, e.g.: a clientelistic or stability-oriented university; difficulty on the part of professors in abandoning a fragmented, feudal, specialist education model and adopting instead a comprehensive training model, as these movement may expose their limitations and force them to renovate contents and practices; and, finally, students that are far from reaching intellectual autonomy, from experiencing situations that simulate real practice, and from taking scientific reading as the basis for their practice.

This ongoing changing process has been observed to take a slow, gradual pace at some higher education institutions, whereas in others a more advanced stage can be found, manifested as the constant search for implementing DCNs. Common to the latter institutions are processes such as the restructuring of teaching models, teaching based on a health care model, knowledge acquisition based on the interaction between professors and students, changes in the attitudes of both professors and students, practice-oriented scenarios that simulate reality, and a symbiotic relationship between teaching, research, and community-institutional relations.

Grounded in curricular guidelines that favor a critical, reflexive approach based on technical and scientific rigor, the Stomatos journal is following this trend and has significantly increased its visibility over a short term, by achieving indexation in new databases, broadening its coverage, and globalizing knowledge with articles published exclusively in English. Soon, a new submission system will also be adopted, contributing toward a better and faster management and tracking of submitted articles.

Our renewed, far-reaching Stomatos reflects the social and scientific dynamism of the journal and board of editors, in line with current ongoing changes in dental knowledge.We are confident that, by intervening in the dental education system, we will be able to deliver better health care for our society.

Prof. Dr. Leandro Azambuja Reichert