Utilising Text Mining to Determine Japanese Dental Hygiene Students' Perceptions of Dental Hygienists and Dentists

OBJECTIVES

This longitudinal text-mining study examines dental hygiene students' perceptions of dental hygienists and dentists at three different points in time during their training course. The null hypothesis of the study was that there would be no change in the dental hygiene students' perceptions of the dental hygienists and dentists over the course of 3 years.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

First-year dental hygiene students participated in this study beginning with the academic year 2020. The questionnaires were conducted in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Participants were asked to write their perceptions of dental hygienists and dentists on the questionnaire sheets, and a quantitative text-mining analysis was performed.

RESULTS

Initially, 59 female students were assessed for enrollment in this study, and the overall participation rate was 88.1%. The first-year students' perceptions of dental hygienists were "assist" and "beside" the dentist based on the co-occurrence group, while in the second-year, "cleaning" and "tooth" emerged in this group, and a new group of "cordinal-listen-story" materialised. In the third year, these groups merged into one group centered on "kind." In the perceptions of dentists, the word "fear" was the most frequent before clinical training, while the frequency of the world "kind" increased after clinical training. The word "treat" was ranked third in the second year of curriculum and then first in the final year.

CONCLUSIONS

The null hypothesis was rejected. It can be concluded that if interactions between dental hygiene and dental students are systematically incorporated from early undergraduate education, clinical practice will be more meaningful and lead to stronger intraprofessional collaboration in future clinical practice.

Dental and dental hygiene students' perceptions on intraprofessional education

PURPOSE

Interprofessional education and intraprofessional learning experiences are fundamental to becoming an efficient member of the healthcare team for dental and dental hygiene students. The purpose of this study is to determine the attitudes and perceptions of The Ohio State University's dental and dental hygiene students on intraprofessional education and collaboration.

METHODS

Dental and dental hygiene students at The Ohio State College of Dentistry were surveyed in this cross-sectional study about their readiness for intraprofessional learning. The questionnaire was modeled after a study conducted by Brame et al. which focused on assessing students' readiness for intraprofessional education and determining their perceptions towards the use of intraprofessional education.

RESULTS

Two hundred and seventy students completed the questionnaire for a 61.3% response rate. Dental hygiene students agreed more to how incorporating shared learning would help to think more positively about other oral health care professionals (p = 0.025) and would help students to become better oral health care team members (p = 0.002). Dental students agreed more than dental hygiene students that the function of a dental hygienist is to provide support for dentists (p ≤ 0.001) and that they must acquire more knowledge than other oral health care students (p ≤ 0.001). Most students (93%) agreed that intraprofessional learning would help in becoming a more effective oral health care team member.

CONCLUSION

Dental hygiene students feel more strongly than dental students about including intraprofessional education in their learning. However, all students were receptive to the idea of incorporating intraprofessional practices.

Interprofessional learning in a student-run dental clinic: The effect on attitudes of students in oral healthcare

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into change in attitudes held by students in oral healthcare about interprofessional learning and collaboration after one year of work in a student-run dental clinic (SRDC). Third- and fourth-year bachelor of dental hygiene students (n = 221) and first- and second-year master of dentistry students (n = 203) participated in baseline and follow-up measurements and completed 570 questionnaires. The Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) was used to measure changes in attitudes toward Interprofessional Education (IPE) during participation in the SRDC. To validate the questionnaire for the setting, professional groups, and wording of RIPLS, we performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Two modified subscales remained: "Teamwork & Collaboration" and "Negative Professional Identity." Mixed linear models were used to assess relationships between students' attitudes toward IPE and participation in the SRDC. Overall, the students had positive attitudes toward IPE. At baseline, the attitudes of the dental hygiene and dentistry students were almost equally positive. After one year, dental hygiene students demonstrated a significantly more positive attitude toward collaborative learning and teamwork than the dentistry students. Further research should investigate whether the positive attitudes impact behavior in professional practice.

An innovative interprofessional dental clinical learning environment using entrustable professional activities

INTRODUCTION

Changes in society, new public demands for dental care and contemporary educational insights have influenced dental education worldwide and demand a renewed perspective. Following this perspective, an innovative interprofessional dental Master curriculum was developed at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES

The curriculum is based on five contemporary educational principles and the core of the curriculum consists of a Student Run Dental Clinic that is fully run by students under professional supervision.

THE NEW CURRICULUM

In the Student Run Dental Clinic, Master dental students and Bachelor oral hygiene students are responsible for the care of approximately 750 patients. The students work within the same clinic for 3 years and patients receive oral health care from the same students over a long period. The clinic is a longitudinal cross-disciplinary clinic with different dental subdisciplines. Entrustable professional activities (also known as EPAs), to our knowledge not yet widely used in dental education, were introduced to facilitate learning and assessment. Fourteen EPAs have been developed to stimulate interprofessional education and learning. Of these, five EPAs are identical for the dental and oral hygiene curriculum, leading to extended interprofessional education and learning in the Student Run Dental Clinic.

DISCUSSION

Preliminary results show that EPAs are generally well received by supervisors and students.

CONCLUSION

To monitor and investigate the exact effect of the interventions and underlying mechanisms, a research programme on interprofessional learning, practice-based learning and EPAs and entrustment in dental education was recently set up.