From dialogue to action: Assessing best practices and actionable steps for oral health professions education clinical and learning environments

The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) embarked upon a path to broadly assess the clinical and learning environments across dental school and allied oral health programs. Assessing clinical learning environments has provided an important opportunity for gaining feedback from learners and team members about their experiences, responding to their needs on an intentional basis and forming context-specific understanding of and evidence for the impact of curriculum, pedagogical, and even patient care practices. This article presents key highlights of the overall usefulness of climate studies across higher education, corporate environments and health professions education. Moving from dialogue to action, it presents clear recommendations for moving forward and maximizing change efforts toward optimally inclusive, equitable, and ethically-centered oral health professions education clinical and learning environments.