scholarly journals A Qualitative Exploration of Existing Reflective Practices Used by Undergraduate Dental Students in Paediatric Dentistry

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Faith Campbell ◽  
Kirsten Jack ◽  
Helen Rogers

Background: Reflection is increasingly significant for dental students and professionals and is a continuing requirement of dental regulatory bodies. There is a paucity of evidence regarding how best to facilitate deep reflection for dental students. This study explored whether the use of clinical logbooks in undergraduate clinical attachments in Paediatric Dentistry was facilitating deep reflection. Methods: This qualitative study used individual interviews for data collection. This was conducted at the University of Sheffield with third year undergraduate dental students and clinical teaching staff. Interviews were immediately transcribed verbatim. A reflexive approach to thematic analysis was used to co-constitute the data, enabling the development of the thematic framework. Results: The sample compromised 10 students and 4 educators. Thematic analysis generated 4 key themes: understanding of reflection, preparation for reflection, importance of learning through experience, and suggestions for development. The findings indicated that students perceived that they were not being supported in engaging in deep reflection by the use of a clinical logbook and that greater preparation for reflection would be beneficial. Conclusions: The current study revealed that using clinical logbooks during clinical attachments in Paediatric Dentistry was not facilitating deep reflection. Further research is required to explore how deep reflection can be facilitated for undergraduate dental students undertaking clinical learning.

Author(s):  
Nabilah Raihana Binti Mohd Rashid ◽  
Muhammad Afif Imran Bin Abu Talib ◽  
Wan Nor Syariza Wan Ali ◽  
Azlan Jaafar ◽  
Muhammad Syafiq Alauddin

Introduction: Undergraduate (UG) dental students are trained for fixed prosthodontics course clinically in teaching institutions during the clinical years. However, there is a lack of objective data on the quality of fixed prostheses preparations done by UG students on their patients for academic and clinical staff. Aim: To evaluate the full-coverage crown preparations performed by UG dental students in the university clinical teaching programme. Materials and Methods: This study was a clinical audit done in the Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Sains Islam, Malaysia (USIM) from April to July 2018. The demographic and clinical data were collected from the patients’ notes and included relevant information of patients such as age, gender and others. Full-coverage crowns were analysed and crown preparation assessments were done using specific criteria and standards. The descriptive data were measured in frequency and percentage for categorical variables and mean and standard deviation for continuous data. Results: A total of 31 patients fitted with 45 units of full-coverage crowns were analysed. The mean age of patients treated by fifth year dental students was 40.5 (±14.16) years. A 51% Porcelain Fused to Metal (PFM) crown provided to the patients. On the whole, UG undergoing the dentistry programme in the institution scored the lowest (51%) on proximal reduction and the highest (97.7%) on producing smooth and continuous preparation. Conclusion: Majority of the crowns prepared by students have acceptable preparation except in proximal reduction and cervical margin preparation that can be improved upon and emphasised further during the teaching and learning sessions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Curran ◽  
Isobel Ryder ◽  
Caroline Strevens

<p align="JUSTIFY">This article introduces a pilot clinic that has been designed and implemented at Portsmouth Law School in partnership with the School of Health Sciences. The benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary team working identified in the health science and legal education literature will be discussed. It looks at the rationale for this innovative development and speculates on the potential for a new professional curriculum that may emerge.</p><p align="JUSTIFY">The philosophy driving this pilot clinic is to contribute to breaking down silo thinking in professional students and build trust in the health and legal systems. This initiative will expose health professional and law students to holistic and therapeutic approaches to problem solving, teaching teamwork, collaboration and to breaking down the negative stereotypes of lawyers.</p><p align="JUSTIFY">The proposed pilot clinic at the University of Portsmouth will provide new opportunities for students studying law and adult nursing to explore how interdisciplinary practice might build bonds of trust between professionals. It will also enable those involved to see potential networks, signposts and links, in order to improve client outcomes.</p><p>This new development, taking lessons from educational practice in health sciences, provides professional and teaching staff operating the clinic to build a new collaborative and dynamic joint curriculum. This new form of clinic, it is argued, provides an alternative to traditional perceptions of clinical teaching across multidisciplinary paradigms.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Martyn Higgins

Debates exist about the separation of the academy and the practicum. The purpose of this study is to explore how its findings may contribute to this discussion. The unique pedagogies of the university and practice are explored and consideration is given to whether practice educators hold an intermediary role. A qualitative study of an undergraduate programme in England using thematic analysis was undertaken once ethical approval was given. Individual interviews and focus groups were used. A total of 48 participants were interviewed at two different points in time (2008 and 2011-2012). Although this is a limited small scale study not susceptible to generalisation it may be able to provide an analytic generalisation, which may be replicable with further studies.The findings indicated practice educators struggled to act as a bridge because the academy and the practicum have conflicting and competing signature pedagogies. The contribution of this study is to the contemporary discussion on the SWRB changes and models such as Frontline.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. bjgp20X711245
Author(s):  
Gail Davidge ◽  
Caroline Sanders ◽  
Rebecca Hays ◽  
Rebecca Morris ◽  
Helen Atherton ◽  
...  

BackgroundPrimary care records have traditionally served the needs and demands of clinicians rather than those of the patient. GP contracts in England state practices must promote and offer registered patients online access to their primary care record and research has shown benefits to both patients and clinicians of doing so. Despite this, we know little about patients’ needs and expectations regarding online access.AimTo explore patients’ views about accessing online primary care records and to find out how patients would like to interact with their records and what support they may need.MethodInterviews and focus groups with a sample of 50 patients from a variety of socio-demographic backgrounds who were either; eligible for the NHS Health Check; had multimorbidities or were carers. Thematic analysis of data identified major themes impacting upon patients’ wishes and needs as well as highlighting population-specific issues.ResultsParticipants highlighted a wide range of views about the benefits and drawbacks of accessing their records online. The majority of participants indicated that they would be more likely to access their online primary care record if improvements were made to the design, reliability and functionality of existing online record services. Carers found accessing online records particularly useful.ConclusionConsultation with patients and carers about their experiences of accessing online records; support needs and preferred functions can provide useful insights to inform the future design of online record services.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4186
Author(s):  
Abdulhakeem Raji ◽  
Abeer Hassan

This paper adopted a case study approach to investigate the sustainability practices of a Scottish university in order to understand if sustainability forms part of its central policy agenda. As such, the paper focuses on the levels of awareness and disclosure of their sustainable practices, measuring the impacts and effectiveness of those initiatives. This paper introduces signaling theory to explore the idea that appropriate communication via integrated thinking can close the gap between the organization and its stakeholders. We believe that the provision of this relevant information will lead to better communication between the organization and its stakeholders, supporting a signaling theory interpretation. Therefore, we are suggesting that integrated thinking is an internal process that organizations can follow to increase the level of disclosure as a communication tool with stakeholders. From the literature reviewed, four themes were identified (definition of university sustainability, sustainability awareness, disclosure framework within universities, and level of accountability). The research adopted a pragmatic view and conducted individual interviews with participants belonging to three stakeholder groups (members of the university’s senior management, the governing council, and the student union executive). Although this study focused on just one Scottish university, it should still provide some insight for the better understanding of the underpinning issues surrounding the sustainability accountability practices of Scottish universities in general. The research findings indicated that the university prioritized only two sustainability dimensions—economic and environmental—and that the university still perceived sustainability as a voluntary exercise. Additionally, it is evident that the university had no framework in place for measuring its sustainability delivery—and therefore had no established medium of communicating these activities to its stakeholders. Moreover, research findings showed that the social and educational context of sustainability was lacking at the university. The university has done little or nothing to educate its stakeholders on sustainability.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-455
Author(s):  
Barbara B. Blechner ◽  
Christie L. Hager ◽  
Nancy R. Williams

Health law and medical ethics are both integral parts of undergraduate medical curricula. The literature has addressed the importance of teaching law and ethics separately in medical school settings, yet there have been few descriptions of teaching law and ethics together in the same curriculum. A combined program in law and ethics required for first-year medical and dental students was developed and implemented by Professor Joseph (Jay) M. Healey, Jr., at the University of Connecticut Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine from 1975 until his death in 1993. This Article describes the thirty-hour, interactive, case-based course he created. The course, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Medicine and Dental Medicine (LEA), has continued after Jay 's death, and is one of his many legacies to us. LEA consists of fifty-six actual and hypothetical cases written by Jay from which basic legal and ethical principles are extracted by participants and reinforced by instructors.


Author(s):  
Shirley Siu Yin Ching ◽  
Kin Yuen Tam ◽  
Lillian Weiwei Zhang ◽  
Jeremy Ng ◽  
Kin Cheung

Limited research has been conducted on community college (CC) transfer students’ (TS) experiences in four-year universities, particularly in Asian contexts. To fill this research gap, in this qualitative study, 124 TS from various disciplines in a Hong Kong university participated in 39 focus groups and seven individual interviews. Unlike their Western counterparts, our TS were relatively better prepared and more academically adaptive. Nevertheless, their social integration was restricted by a lack of time for extra-curricular activities, a sense of inferiority and incompetence, and restricted social circles that did not enable interaction with non-TS. These challenges and their implications are discussed. In particular, this study has highlighted differences between the special education systems for CC transfer in Hong Kong and those in Western CC models. The study has also highlighted the study-induced stress, and poor self-perceptions that TS experience, despite their academic abilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolan Li ◽  
Yanbo Shan ◽  
Yangjingwen Liu ◽  
Yingwen Lin ◽  
Lin Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The National Dental Undergraduate Clinical Skills Competition known as the Guanghua Cup was held in Guangzhou, China, for three consecutive years from 2017 to 2019 to promote the clinical teaching of undergraduate dental education and to enhance communication among different universities. The present study aimed to introduce the organization, procedures, and consequences of the competition, in addition to analyzing the influences of competition on the reform of undergraduate dental education. Methods By analyzing the descriptive statistics of the Guanghua Cup, the competitions’ organization, the participating students’ performances, and the outcomes of competitions were analyzed. After distributing questionnaires to all participants of the 2nd and 3rd Cups, their attitudes towards the competition and their evaluation of the role of the competitions in promoting undergraduate dental education were analyzed. Results A total of 24 schools participated in the 3 competition years. The contents of the competitions covered cariology, endodontics, periodontology, prosthodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, dental anatomy, and first aid (e.g., operative skills and theoretical knowledge). Compared with those of the 2nd Cup, the mean scores of the operative skills significantly improved in the stations related to periodontology, prosthodontics, and dental anatomy (p < 0.05) in the 3rd Cup. In addition, 338 valid questionnaires were collected, for a response rate of 87.79 %. Overall, the participants spoke highly of the Guanghua Cup. Based on their self-perception and self-evaluation, the majority of interviewees agreed that the competition helped develop collegiality and teamwork among the participating students, improved the students’ clinical skills and promoted the improvement of teaching resources (e.g., purchasing and updating equipment, models or experimental materials). Conclusions The competition enjoyed the widest coverage since it involved dental schools from all of the different geographical regions of China. Dental students could exhibit their clinical skills in a competitive environment and develop collegiality and teamwork. Future competitions should be optimized through their organization and contents. The education quality of the participating schools affected by such competition should be investigated in a more objective and comparable way.


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