European Journal of Dental Education最新文献

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a rapid shift towards remote learning in dental education, influencing practicing dentists' work-life balance (WLB). This German nationwide questionnaire study, conducted in September 2022, aimed to explore the impact of transitioning to remote learning on the WLB of dentists, considering factors such as gender, parental status and professional roles.

Methods: A voluntary and anonymous online survey involving 672 dentists utilised the 'Trier Short Scale for Measuring Work-Life Balance' (TKS-WLB). Statistical analyses used R, employing descriptive statistics for metric variables and mixed models for group comparisons. Post hoc analyses utilised t-tests.

Results: Overall, participants reported an enhanced WLB post-transition. Gender disparities were observed, with men consistently experiencing better balance than women. The primary motivator for online training participation was the reduction of travel-related challenges, cited by 92% of respondents. Notably, 52.8% faced no issues with the transition, and 55.5% found online training to complement in-person events effectively. Women (71.8%) and participants with children (73.2%) expressed a preference for future asynchronous online training opportunities.

Conclusions: This study underscores the positive impact of remote learning on the WLB of dentists, extending beyond the pandemic's challenges. Innovative online training programs, particularly beneficial for women and those with family commitments, have the potential to reshape dental education.

Introduction: Young people, including dental students, generally have little experience with older people who suffer from multimorbidity with age-related functional and/or cognitive limitations. For this reason, the 'Gero-Parcours' (GP) as an educational instrument of multi-staging simulation teaching was developed for students to experience ageing and its limitation.

Materials and methods: The GP consists of different stations (e.g., hearing and visual impairments, teeth brushing by third-party cleaners, emotion), which are completed within 15 minutes each by two students at the same time supervised by an educated professional. Students' assessment of the GP at the University of Leipzig, Germany between 2021 and 2024 was evaluated by using written questionnaires.

Results: Student's experiences and perceptions of the GP highlighted its positive influence on their understanding of ageing. Most students stated that the course enriched their professional knowledge and dispelled misconceptions about ageing in patients. Some students expressed personal concerns about ageing. Students found the transfer from a wheelchair to a dental chair station most beneficial for their future work life, while the clinical nutrition station received the lowest rating.

Discussion: The GP illustrates ageing with its limitations. The students and supervisors appreciated this practical training. However, when planning a GP, it is necessary to provide the necessary resources for the course. Students from the higher years can also be recruited and trained as supervisors.

Conclusion: The GP can be easily adapted to the number of students and supervisors as well as to the time available. As the students found the GP to be a helpful educational instrument, the authors recommend including it as mandatory in the dental education curriculum.

Introduction: The introduction highlights the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on higher education (HE), emphasising its potential to enhance student learning and instructor efficiency while also addressing significant challenges such as accuracy, privacy, and ethical concerns. By exploring the benefits and risks of AI integration, the introduction underscores the urgent need for evidence-based, inclusive, and adaptable frameworks to guide universities in leveraging GenAI responsibly and effectively in academic environments.

Aims: This paper presents a comprehensive process for developing cross-disciplinary and consensus-based guidelines, based on the latest evidence for the integration of GenAI at European University Cyprus (EUC). In response to the rapid adoption of AI tools such as LLMs in HE, a task group at EUC created a structured framework to guide the ethical and effective use of GenAI in academia, one that was intended to be flexible enough to incorporate new developments and not infringe on instructors' academic freedoms, while also addressing ethical and practical concerns.

Results: The framework development was informed by extensive literature reviews and consultations. Key pillars of the framework include: addressing the risks and opportunities presented by GenAI; promoting transparent communication; ensuring responsible use by students and educators; safeguarding academic integrity. The guidelines emphasise the balance between, on the one hand, leveraging AI to enhance educational experiences, and, on the other maintaining critical thinking and originality. The framework also includes practical recommendations for AI usage, classroom integration, and policy formulation, ensuring that AI augments rather than replaces human judgement in educational settings.

Conclusions: The iterative development process, including the use of GenAI tools for refining the guidelines, illustrates a hands-on approach to AI adoption in HE, and the resulting guidelines may serve as a model for other higher education institutions (HEIs) aiming to integrate AI tools while upholding educational quality and ethical standards.

Background: This study aimed to simulate diverse scenarios of students employing LLMs for CDLE examination preparation, providing a detailed evaluation of their performance in medical education.

Methods: A stratified random sampling strategy was implemented to select and subsequently revise 200 questions from the CDLE. Seven LLMs, recognised for their exceptional performance in the Chinese domain, were selected as test subjects. Three distinct testing scenarios were constructed: answering questions, explaining questions and adversarial testing. The evaluation metrics included accuracy, agreement rate and teaching effectiveness score. Wald χ² tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests were employed to determine whether the differences among the LLMs across various scenarios and before and after adversarial testing were statistically significant.

Results: The majority of the tested LLMs met the passing threshold on the CDLE benchmark, with Doubao-pro 32k and Qwen2-72b (81%) achieving the highest accuracy rates. Doubao-pro 32k demonstrated the highest 98% agreement rate with the reference answers when providing explanations. Although statistically significant differences existed among various LLMs in their teaching effectiveness scores based on the Likert scale, all these models demonstrated a commendable ability to deliver comprehensible and effective instructional content. In adversarial testing, GPT-4 exhibited the smallest decline in accuracy (2%, p = 0.623), while ChatGLM-4 demonstrated the least reduction in agreement rate (14.6%, p = 0.001).

Conclusions: LLMs trained on Chinese corpora, such as Doubao-pro 32k, demonstrated superior performance compared to GPT-4 in answering and explaining questions, with no statistically significant difference. However, during adversarial testing, all models exhibited diminished performance, with GPT-4 displaying comparatively greater robustness. Future research should further investigate the interpretability of LLM outputs and develop strategies to mitigate hallucinations generated in medical education.

Background: Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT are increasingly relevant in dental education, offering potential enhancements in personalised learning and clinical reasoning. However, specific guidance from dental institutions remains unexplored.

Aim: To identify, analyse and summarise existing guidelines from universities and organisations on using GenAI in dental education, focusing on recommendations for academic staff.

Methods: A scoping review (10.17605/OSF.IO/3XMP7) searched for GenAI guidance on university websites, search engines (Google Search, Scholar, Perplexity and PubMed) and through contacting relevant academics (January 2022 to June 2024). Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data, including implementation details, AI tools and permitted/prohibited uses. Thematic analysis revealed common applications, benefits, challenges and recommendations.

Results: Thirty-one unique documents were included from 21 universities in 15 countries and three international organisations. Thematic analysis identified common applications, benefits, challenges and recommendations for integrating GenAI, including facilitating teaching and learning, personalised learning, efficient content creation and encouraging critical thinking. However, challenges such as academic integrity, ethical use, bias and privacy issues were also identified. No dental education-specific guidelines were found.

Conclusion: This review identified and summarised existing GenAI guidelines from universities and organisations relevant to dental education. The guidelines emphasise ethical use, transparency, academic integrity, secure environments and AI misuse detection tools. However, the absence of dental specific guidance presents an opportunity to fill this gap, providing recommendations for academic staff to integrate GenAI effectively while promoting critical thinking and responsible AI use.

Objectives: To describe the stress and confidence of dental students during the management of an endodontic emergency (EE) and investigate the associated factors.

Methods: This cross-sectional study included 227 undergraduate dental students undergoing clinical training (i.e., in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year) who responded to questions asking for their overall level of stress during an EE and their level of confidence in their ability to manage 50 steps of EE management related to communication and technical skills, and clinical examination and decision-making.

Results: Managing EE was perceived as slightly or fairly stressful by 70% of the fourth- to sixth-year students. The fourth- and fifth-year students felt significantly greater stress (p = 0.026) and lower confidence (p < 0.001) than the sixth-year students, as did women (p < 0.001 for both). No significant difference in stress or confidence levels was observed across the clinical training environments evaluated. Just over half of the students reported being confident about discussing a case with their teacher. The situations in which students felt least confident were patient management, crack detection, lymph node palpation, locoregional or intrapulpal anaesthesia, and intraoral drainage, and those in which students gained the most confidence in the sixth year compared to the lower grades were clinical decision-making.

Conclusions: Managing EE was perceived as slightly or fairly stressful for most students, and stress decreased, while confidence increased in the 3 years of clinical training. Although these findings are positive for the existing training program, there is still work to be done to improve students' learning experiences, especially on teacher receptiveness.

Introduction: Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) serve as a reliable assessment tool for clinical and competency evaluation. Traditional OSCEs, involving live patients, present logistical challenges and evoke student anxiety. In an effort to create a comprehensive clinical series of examinations, electronic OSCEs (e-OSCEs) were developed for assessing clinical competencies in prosthodontics at a large dental school. This manuscript aims to describe e-OSCEs as a competency assessment.

Methods: The e-OSCEs were implemented for the graduating classes from 2014 to 2023, covering categories of Single-unit Crowns and Fixed Partial Dentures, Implants, Removable Partial Dentures and Complete Dentures. A digital library of clinically relevant questions was developed to simulate chairside scenarios. Competence in any area was defined as scoring a 100% where questions were taken from a pool that represented the full scope of the clinical procedure.

Results: Ten-year retrospective data indicate sustained student performance over the years, with the majority achieving competence after three e-OSCE attempts.

Discussion: Advantages of the e-OSCE include standardised assessments, reduced examiner bias and adaptability to external disruptions in addition to fair and relevant evaluations, cost-effectiveness and test security. Evaluation of e-OSCE outcomes allows ease of analysis for curriculum enhancement and modification.

Conclusion: The e-OSCE method of clinical assessment offers a standardised, clinically equivalent and efficient process for assessing dental students' competencies. The assessment methodology aligns with US accreditation standards and can be easily adapted by other institutions with different grading parameters for comprehensive clinical assessments. This approach provides a feasible and effective method for assessments in dental education.

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the impact of community-based dental education (CBDE) on the learning experiences of undergraduate dental students and recent dental graduates from two diverse geographical regions.

Methods: The study followed a cross-sectional design, conducted online using Google Forms, with ethical approval from Qatar University. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used to recruit dental students and recent graduates from three institutions in India and one in Qatar. A questionnaire based on 20 closed-ended items and two open-ended questions, developed by a team of dental academics, was used for data collection. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and thematic analysis for open-ended responses.

Results: The study included 148 participants, with 116 female (78.37%) and 32 male (21.62%) students, mostly from India (75%) and the rest from Qatar (25%). ANOVA revealed significant differences based on age, country and stage of education (p < 0.001). Dental interns had the highest mean score (1.12 ± 0.8), while Year 2 students had the lowest (0.75 ± 1.08). Female participants had a slightly higher mean score (1.05 ± 0.77) than male participants (0.92 ± 0.98), although this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.127). Key challenges included inadequate support and cultural barriers in India, and conflicts with religious obligations and didactic workload in Qatar. Recommendations focused on enhancing field activities, logistical support and mentorship programmes.

Conclusions: The study shows that dental students value CBDE for developing essential skills for community engagement. However, challenges differ across socio-cultural contexts, highlighting the need for more localised and supportive frameworks to improve CBDE experiences. The variation in student perceptions by age, education stage and country suggests that CBDE strategies should be flexible and adaptable to address the diverse learning needs of students.

Introduction: Third molar removal is one of the most common surgical procedures in dentistry. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the learning curve of dentists undergoing surgical training. Thus, the aims of this study were to assess the performance of oral surgery residents in third molar extractions based on operative time and the occurrence of incidents/complications, and to determine which variables are associated with surgical difficulty.

Material and methods: A prospective cohort study was carried out in adults requiring an impacted lower third molar extraction. All procedures were performed by residents of a master's degree in Oral Surgery and Implantology. The outcome variables were operative time and surgeon-reported difficulty. A descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analysis was performed.

Results: One hundred and 74 patients were operated on by six students. Similar performance was observed among the surgeons. Although a significant improvement in operative time was seen after 10 cases, a non-significant decreasing trend of incidents was also found. The multivariate analysis revealed an association between difficulty with crown/root sectioning and impaction against the second molar.

Conclusions: At least 10 lower impacted third molar extractions performed by postgraduate students with experience in tooth extractions are required to improve the operative time. Incidents seem to decrease slightly with the number of procedures performed. Surgical difficulty seems to be related to the need for crown/tooth sectioning and greater impaction against the second molar. Further studies are required to confirm these findings.

Introduction: Generic competencies are transferable skills, knowledge and attitudes essential for personal and professional development and not restricted to any particular field. Evidence shows the relevance of incorporating them into the dentistry curriculum. However, defining which competencies to prioritise is complex and requires input from the academic community. This research aimed to understand the perception of dentistry students and teachers at Universidad Diego Portales regarding the importance of generic competencies in the profession and their development during undergraduate studies.

Materials and methods: 74 teachers and 256 students participated, representing 55% of the study population. The Tuning Latin America project's generic competencies questionnaire was used, assessing 27 competencies in terms of relevance, ranking, and development.

Results: A positive perception regarding the importance of generic competencies was observed, with over 90% of participants considering them quite or highly relevant. When ranking, five skills stood out: three from the learning process, one from social values, and one from interpersonal skills. Regarding the development of such skills, both teachers and students expressed that many competencies were not well implemented; over 50% of participants considered 14 of the presented skills as poorly developed or not developed at all.

Discussion: Each programme must select generic competencies for their students' training, as this definition varies according to the consulted group and country.

Conclusions: Both teachers and students recognised the professional relevance of generic competencies in dentistry. Both groups perceived that many were not adequately developed in the curriculum.