Abstract: The problems of training highly qualified specialists – dentists and maxillofacial surgeons – are discussed, taking into account the level of their pedagogical competence, which allows them to develop professionally important qualities and establish adequate relationships in the doctor-patient pair. From this perspective, the parameters of domestic continuous dental education and its stages are characterized, based on scientific and pedagogical expertise and organizational innovations. The goals and objectives of such complementarity in the functioning of the structures of additional professional education; its high productivity is emphasized at the Central Research Institute of Dentistry and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Russian Ministry of Health. The study analyzes the content of the key concepts of “coaching” and “self-design”, and performs a comparative analysis of: 1) the results of a public opinion survey; 2) sociological research regarding the reproduction of medical personnel; 3) author’s surveys and in-depth interviews about the parameters and quality of educational processes. The novelty of the study lies in the substantiation of the urgency of introducing the concepts of “coaching” and “self-design” to concretize new approaches in the theoretical support of postgraduate training of dentists and maxillofacial surgeons. For the first time, the complementary nature of the relationship between them is substantiated. The author emphasizes that the adaptation of the corresponding pedagogical techniques allows us to more clearly highlight the role of the pedagogical component in the training of highly qualified specialists in these areas. The main conclusion of the study is that coaching and techniques of conscious self-design, being in a relationship of complementarity, determine a significant increase in the level of postgraduate education, meeting such conditions as a combination of pedagogical competence with the peculiarities of the structural and content components of scientific activity.