Outreach programs: an adjunct for improving dental education

INTRODUCTION

An important objective of education is to improve clinical competence and hence confidence of students. Ample evidence on effectiveness of medical outreach programs is available but data pertaining to effectiveness of dental outreach, especially from developing countries, are still limited. The present study was undertaken to assess effectiveness of outreach placements on clinical confidence and communication skills of Indian dental students.

METHODS

A non-randomized trial was conducted in three randomly selected dental colleges of Bangalore city, India, amongst 89 students pursuing internship programs. Subjects were put into two groups: outreach (study group) and dental school based only (control group). A pre-tested, self-administered questionnaire was used to evaluate the change in clinical confidence and communication skills of both groups from baseline and after 3 months of follow-up via global self-assessment test, then-test and transition judgment. Outcome measures were analysed using t-test.

RESULTS

Global assessment revealed outreach group confidence level was higher in comparison to dental school based group only (4.37±0.49 vs 4.04±0.21, p<0.001), while using then-test their baseline confidence was observed to be lower (3.42±0.75 vs 3.72±0.72, p=0.04). Transition judgement rated an increase in their confidence significantly higher than the dental school based group only (4.24±0.91 vs 2.54±0.66, p<0.001). The outreach group rated increase in communication skills to be higher for the transition judgement.

CONCLUSIONS

The present trial supports the concept of outreach programs to be incorporated in the existing dental curricula in order to supplement the traditional school-based dental education to achieve an overall professionally trained dentist.