Journal of Dental Education最新文献

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess trends related to integrated questions created by fourth-year dental students as a part of the Basic Science and Clinical Science Spiral Seminar Series (BaSiCSsss) at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUSDM).

Methods: Deidentified BaSiCSsss presentations from 2019 to 2023 were obtained from the Office of Academic Affairs at TUSDM. The integrated questions created by fourth-year dental students were extracted and compiled into an Excel sheet. Following the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations (JCNDE) guidelines for the Integrated National Board Dental Examination (INBDE) question construction, each question was evaluated on 13 distinct categories. The categories consisted of 10 foundational knowledge (FK) and three clinical content (CC) areas. Calibration of the two investigators (Kyle E. Wright and Samar Shaikh) was performed. The chi-square test and Fisher's exact test were used to evaluate trends of FK and CC category representation across the 4 years.

Results: Twelve hundred fifty-six questions were extracted from the BaSiCSsss presentations between academic years 2019 and 2023. CC1 (diagnosis and treatment planning) emerged as the most represented category at 44.2% of the questions while FK2 (physics and chemistry to explain normal biology and pathobiology) had the least representation at 1.1%. Statistically significant year-to-year differences (p < 0.05) were identified in FK1, FK5, FK6, FK8, CC1, and CC2 with FK5, FK6, and CC2 exhibiting a notable downward trend over the 4 years.

Conclusion: The current study highlights the trends in student-created integrated questions. Understanding these trends may aid in curriculum development, focusing on areas with decreasing representation and ensuring a balanced coverage of topics optimizing learning outcomes.

Purpose: Clinical instructors are responsible for educating dental hygiene students in the patient care environment. While these instructors have experience in the dental field, they often do not have pedagogical training, or a background, related to education. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the experiences of dental professionals who transitioned from clinical practitioners to clinical instructors at one US dental hygiene program in 2022. As the theoretical underpinning for this study, andragogy offered a lens through which to tailor the creation of training opportunities distinctive to the needs of adult learners. The central research question for this study was, "What are the experiences of dentists and dental hygienists who have transitioned from clinical practice to the role of clinical instructors?" The subquestions guiding this study were "What forms of education, professional development, or support are necessary to help guide the transition from healthcare professional to clinical instructor?" and "How can this education, professional development, or support be delivered to clinical instructors in a way that meets their needs as adult learners?"

Methods: A transcendental phenomenological approach enabled a deeper understanding of participants' experiences and their thought processes as they transitioned from clinical practitioners to their roles as clinical instructors. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit dentists and dental hygienists who served as clinical instructors in a dental hygiene program at a midwestern public university. Data collection was triangulated using individual interviews, photograph journals, and a virtual focus group. Data analysis was conducted using epoché, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variance, and synthesis of the structural and textural descriptions gathered during data collection.

Results: A total of 13 clinical faculty members participated in all three parts of the study. Five themes were derived from the data collection: life responsibilities, challenges faced, training received, training needed, and training delivery preferences. These themes helped to create an understanding of the phenomena of transitioning from clinical practitioner to clinical instructor as the participants experienced it in addition to training delivery preferences.

Conclusion: The study's findings highlighted the importance of training dentists and dental hygienists to become clinical instructors while using andragogical principles. IRB approval: This project received Institutional Review Board (IRB) exemption from Liberty University (IRB-FY22-23-285).

Purpose/objectives: Limited access to oral care disproportionately affects underserved populations. Community-based clinical education (CBCE) could address this health inequity. The purpose of this study was to compare the identified barriers and benefits of implementing CBCE in the curricula of US dental and dental hygiene education programs.

Methods: In the fall of 2023, a survey developed through focus groups was sent to 387 CBCE leaders in US dental and dental hygiene programs that were accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA).

Results: There were 129 survey responses for a 33% response rate. There were statistically significant differences in institutional barriers: losing school production (p = 0.04), COVID-19 pandemic (p = 0.02), CODA process for accreditation of major sites (p < 0.01), CODA standards (p = 0.01), number of dental chairs in school clinic (p = 0.03), and length of dental/dental hygiene program too short (p < 0.01); and human resource barriers: student transportation (p < 0.01), faculty buy-in (p = 0.01), and student housing (p < 0.01). Benefits included: raising student awareness of social determinants of health (p = 0.04), increasing oral health workforce (p < 0.01), and engagement with harder clinical cases (p < 0.01).

Conclusion(s): There were differences in the identified barriers and benefits to implementing CBCE in the curricula of US dental and dental hygiene education programs. The findings could inform the feasibility of implementing CBCE in both education programs, as well as address health inequities in access to oral care.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to obtain a validated consensus among expert periodontists in Saudi Arabia regarding end-of-periodontics-residency-training entrustable professional activities (EPAs) using a modified Delphi method.

Methods: The study consisted of two phases. A preliminary phase in which experts met and proposed an initial list of EPAs following an extensive literature review. The second phase consisted of two rounds of the modified Delphi method in which expert periodontists in Saudi Arabia determined the content validity of each EPA. This was determined with a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not important/relevant) to 5 (very important/relevant), and the mean score for each EPA was calculated. EPAs with a mean value of ≤ 4 or agreement rate among experts of less than 80% were excluded.

Results: An initial list of 40 EPAs was proposed. A total of 30 expert periodontists participated in the first round, and 24 participated in the second round of the modified Delphi method ratings. Most of the participants were program directors and represented different programs and cities in Saudi Arabia. Five EPAs were removed, and a final list of EPAs was produced based on the defined criteria. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.920, indicating high reliability.

Conclusions: A final list of 35 end-of-periodontics-training EPAs was produced. The findings of this study can serve as a valuable resource for curriculum development, assessments, and evaluation of periodontics training programs in Saudi Arabia.

Objectives: The triple jump examination (TJE) has been instituted at the Ostrow School of Dentistry of the University of Southern California (OSDUSC) since 2001 as an assessment tool of critical thinking skills for its learner-centered pedagogy. A 2013 study detailed the TJE's design, validity, and initial outcomes. The current study focused on its 13-year sustainability including a transition from in-person to hybrid TJE by assessing outcomes from the graduating Classes of 2014 through 2026.

Methods: The study was approved by the USC Institutional Review Board (#UP-21-00272-AM001). To assess sustainability, the study first examined agreements among TJE faculty raters based on a total of 10,512 TJEs given to 1872 students from the 13 classes. Next, to determine whether the effectiveness of TJE was impacted by the transition from traditional to hybrid TJE, an independent t-test was performed to examine student performance between the two exam delivery methods based on 4896 TJEs given to 864 students.

Results: The study observed a high level of agreement among faculty raters throughout the study period. The general agreement rates, exact agreement rates, and disagreement rates averaged 99.2%, 77.3%, and 0.8%, respectively. Students' TJE performance was similar between the traditional and hybrid delivery methods (p-value = 0.629 > 0.05, t critical two-tail = 2.074, t stat = 0.489).

Conclusion: The TJE at OSDUSC proves to be a sustainable and reliable instrument with high internal consistency among raters when evaluating students' performance. The transition from traditional to hybrid TJE has no impact on the TJE's effectiveness.

Purpose: To compare the educational outcomes of remote instruction (RI) in impression-taking using smart glasses with those of face-to-face instruction (FI) and paper-based self-learning (SL) and analyze the educational effects, aiming to develop a remote clinical training strategy.

Methods: Participants were recruited from among the dental residents who were trained in the first-year clinical program at the university hospital in 2023. The participants were divided into three groups as the original skill level was equal, and the groups were assigned RI, FI, printed guidance, and SL. All the participants took impressions of the jaw models attached to the mannequin using alginate impression material. Next, assigned instructions were provided. Then again, the trainees took impressions of the jaw models. The pre- and postinstruction impressions of each participant were evaluated, and the change in the impression score was statistically analyzed.

Results: The pre- and postinstruction scores of the trainees in the RI and FI groups showed a significant increase (p < 0.05), whereas no significant difference was observed in the score changes in the SL group. In the intergroup comparisons, the score changes of the RI and FI groups were greater than those of the SL group, although no significant difference was found between the score changes of the RI and FI groups (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: RI in impression-taking using smart glasses has a greater educational effectiveness than paper-based SL. It has also been suggested that RI can have educational efficacy similar to FI.

Objectives: This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the layered curriculum method (LCM) and project-based learning method (PBLM), on dental students in the evaluation of cysts and tumors affecting the jaws and surrounding tissues, which have an important place in dental practice.

Methods: Forty-nine 3rd-year dental students who agreed to participate in the study voluntarily were randomly divided into two groups: LCM and PBLM. Pre-test was administered to all students. Students in the PBLM group were divided into five groups and each group was asked to complete a project within a 5-week period and present it to their groupmates at the end of the period. Students in the LCM group were asked to choose the activities most suitable for their learning styles at each layer and to progress by being evaluated by educators in brief interviews throughout the learning process. At the end of the 5-week training period, a post-test and a post-participation questionnaire were administered to students in both groups to obtain feedback. The pre-test and post-test results of the groups and their answers to the post-participation questionnaire were analyzed statistically.

Results: Post-test results were statistically higher than pre-test results in both LCM and PBLM groups (p < 0.001). When the LCM and PBLM groups were compared, there was no statistically significant difference in terms of pre-test and post-test results (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: Both PBLM and LCM positively contributed to pre-graduate dental education by enhancing students' academic achievements. Students in both groups stated that their research skills, study habits, and learning motivation increased. Since both models adopt the theory of multiple intelligences, similar methods are recommended for inclusion in dental education.

Objectives: In this study, we compared the performance of ChatGPT-3.5 to that of ChatGPT-4o in the context of the Japanese National Dental Examination, which assesses clinical reasoning skills and dental knowledge, to determine their potential usefulness in dental education.

Methods: ChatGPT's performance was assessed using 1399 (55% of the exam) of 2520 questions from the Japanese National Dental Examinations (111-117). The 1121 excluded questions (45% of the exam) contained figures or tables that ChatGPT could not recognize. The questions were categorized into 18 different subjects based on dental specialty. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software, with McNemar's test applied to assess differences in performance.

Results: A significant improvement was noted in the percentage of correct answers from ChatGPT-4o (84.63%) compared with those from ChatGPT-3.5 (45.46%), demonstrating enhanced reliability and subject knowledge. ChatGPT-4o consistently outperformed ChatGPT-3.5 across all dental subjects, with significant improvements in subjects such as oral surgery, pathology, pharmacology, and microbiology. Heatmap analysis revealed that ChatGPT-4o provided more stable and higher correct answer rates, especially for complex subjects.

Conclusions: This study found that advanced natural language processing models, such as ChatGPT-4o, potentially have sufficiently advanced clinical reasoning skills and dental knowledge to function as a supplementary tool in dental education and exam preparation.