The ultra-modern ACTA building, where half of Dutch dentists are trained, does not look out of place among the office palaces on the Zuidas. The building still attracts the interest of international visitors from the world of dentistry who come to see the first dental drill simulator and the enormous practice rooms.
When the new Academic Center Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA) on the Zuidas opened its doors exactly 13 years ago, students were initially unhappy with the new building. After all, the beloved bar at the location on Louwesweg, where students, faculty, and staff could casually exchange ideas over a drink, was gone.
“The VU and UvA had decided that there should be no bar,” says Professor of Dentistry Albert Feilzer, who was ACTA dean there at the time. “Eventually, together with the student union, we were able to arrange a mobile bar as a solution so that people could still have weekly drinks. At the same time, we realized that a drink could lead to segregation between Dutch students and Muslim students who do not drink alcohol. After all, ACTA has by far the most diverse faculty of UvA and VU and we are proud of that. That’s why non-alcoholic drinks are now included.”
Floss dispenser
That diversity is also visible in the reception hall, where students pass by and patients sit in the waiting area. In fact, in addition to over 900 students and 500 staff members, ACTA has a patient base of over 27,000 people, more than 300 of whom are treated daily by students under the supervision of dental instructors. The waiting area is located in the “heart” of the building, next to the Hippocratic oath and bust depicted on the wall—in front of which graduating students like to pose—and a cafeteria. Wide escalators divide the space in two. In the corner is a vending machine that sells dental floss and toothpicks.
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The building was designed with flow in mind. Researchers take the elevator to the upper floors, the protruding part where the labs are. Students and patients take the escalator to the teaching spaces and treatment rooms on the south side.
Louwesweg
In the old ACTA building on Louwesweg, now a student apartment building, research, care, and education were not separated. “At the beginning, even professors still had their own bathroom in their office and an adjoining treatment room, so all processes, teaching, research, and patient care were completely intertwined. It’s much better now,” Feilzer says.
That building also became unsuitable for dental education around the turn of the century due to other developments. For example, new insights into practice hygiene and related legislation meant that students could no longer have their own mobile locker with dental instruments; instead, the faculty had to provide all instruments and consumables, and sterilization of equipment was centralized. In the new building, fixed rooms over several floors were set up for this, and dirty dishes were transported by elevator to a central sterilization department.
There were also increasing numbers of female dentists in training. Whereas in the 1980s only five percent of the students were women, today 80 percent are women, which meant that changing rooms and bathrooms also had to be adapted.
In addition, by early 2000 the concrete floors in the building on Louwesweg were already so riddled with holes for new pipes that a laborer doing construction work there confided to Dean Feilzer, “One more hole and the building collapses.”
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The ACTA building on the VU campus is far superior to the old one. From dated housing, the program moved to a state-of-the-art edifice that has attracted international interest since its opening. Visitors come especially for the pre-clinic, the largest lab classroom in the world. When Folia is shown around by former dean Feilzer on a Monday afternoon, the atmosphere bustles. Students practice in groups of six each on their own artificial head with artificial teeth, each with the corresponding tubing and adjustable lamp just like in a real dental clinic.
On floors below, students treat real patients. This is done in a so-called carousel, a shielded area where 12 students in groups of two treat six patients under the supervision of one teacher. Students also practice on each other here.
We go down to the first floor where a student is working intently with the dental drill simulator (Simodont), another highlight for international visitors. Wearing 3D glasses, the student drills a virtual hole in a virtual tooth. The situation is lifelike, including the resistance the student feels when the drill hits the tooth, the virtual mirror that allows the student to see the tooth, and the sound of the drill. “This way you can endlessly practice the most difficult part of drilling a hole,” Feilzer says. “When you practice on plastic you then have to do everything over again.”
Since 2010, ACTA has been one of the first dental schools to work with the simulator, which the dental school developed in collaboration with aircraft manufacturer Fokker. More than 100 dental schools now work with the technology. Feilzer says: “Even surgeons at the AMC are now coming to see the art with the arrival of the digital operating table; we were 20 years ahead of them.”
Dentist shortage
Since the building opened, the number of students and staff has remained roughly the same, while the dentist shortage is growing. That shortage will only get worse when oral care is included in the basic insurance package again: a plan that many political parties—including PVV and NSC—have in their party manifestos.
The ministries of VWS and OCW see shortening dental education as a solution, but a committee of dentists and dental administrators that includes Feilzer concluded in recent months: It’s a bad plan.
Feilzer sees more benefit in training additional dentists or redistributing the tasks of dentists and dental hygienists. “We could train more dentists if we could continue to work in the building during the summer, which is what happens during residencies, for example. We could also work evening shifts.” In any case, the building does not pose a limitation, according to Feilzer. “And should space run out, there are plenty of locations on the VU campus that could be used.”