The Impact of an Interprofessional Oral Health Curriculum on Trainees (original) (raw)
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The journal of physician assistant education, 2017
Purpose Physician assistants (PA) are health care team members who often work in primary care. Providing oral health education to PAs during training could improve oral health for vulnerable patients who seek treatment in the primary care setting and who are less able to access dental care. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a peerto-peer oral health curriculum taught by dental students to their PA student colleagues. Methods Dental students presented an interactive, casebased curriculum, followed by a hands-on oral examination training session. PA student feedback was obtained, and results were analyzed. Results Students found the content to be highly relevant and well presented. Conveying oral health competencies to future primary care providers may reduce oral health disparities. Conclusions PA students reported improved understanding of oral health and indicated they would incorporate what they had learned into their future clinical practice. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Curriculum influence on interdisciplinary oral health education and practice
Journal of Public Health Dentistry, 2017
Objectives: Oral diseases are very prevalent across the lifespan and impact overall health, yet are largely preventable. The Smiles for Life (SFL) curriculum was created to educate healthcare providers about oral disease and support integration of oral health and primary care. This study examines SFL's influence on clinical practice and education. Methods: Surveys were sent to registered users of SFL. Users who self-identified as direct care providers (DCPs), or educators, were included in the analysis. Results: Survey response rate was 18 percent, with 87 percent identifying as DCPs and 13 percent as educators. Across professions, 85 percent of DCPs reported SFL influencing their practice to some degree, with variance among profession type and experience. DCPs most commonly reported that SFL led them to improve how they conduct oral health activities, with 60 percent performing the activity more skillfully following completion of SFL. Fluoride varnish application was the most common practice behavior initiated, and caries risk assessments was the oral health activity affected to the greatest degree. A majority of educators (94 percent) reported that SFL led them to incorporate or enhance oral health in their teaching. SFL helped educators emphasize the importance of oral health, improved their ability to teach content, raised motivation, and reduced barriers to teaching oral health. Conclusions: Data supports that SFL is positively influencing oral health practice across professions, especially in areas of caries risk assessment and fluoride varnish application. SFL improves the frequency and quality with which DCPs and educators participate in oral health activities, and facilitates oral health inclusion in primary care.
The journal of physician assistant education, 2010
A review of the medical literature indicates that physician assistants (PAs) are not educationally prepared for oral health issues. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the status of oral health curricula and the knowledge and skills taught within PA curricula. Methods: A survey examining oral health curricula in PA education was distributed electronically to the directors of all 142 accredited PA programs in the United States. The survey focused on aspects of oral health that programs currently teach and aspects that merit future inclusion. The survey data were analyzed using SPSS version 17. Results: Eighty-three of the 142 PA program directors (58.4%) responded to the survey. Over 74% believed that dental disease prevention should be addressed in PA education, yet only 21% of programs actually did so. Most respondents (94.7%) also agreed that PAs should routinely assess and screen for early signs of dental disease and counsel patients on preventing dental problems. Currently, over half of PA programs teach examination of children's teeth for cavities (55.6%), dedicating on average 3.6 hours toward oral health education. Most respondents (more than 90%) expressed a desire to implement an oral health module in their programs. On average, program directors felt that 5.3 hours should be dedicated to oral health. Conclusion: Many PA program directors believe that PA programs are responsible for educating students about oral health; however, most PA program directors report a lack of oral health education within their curricula.
Attaining interprofessional competencies by connecting oral health to overall health
Journal of Dental Education, 2020
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an annual oral-systemic health interprofessional education (IPE) clinical simulation and case study experience with nurse practitioner/midwifery (NP/MW), dental (DDS), medical (MD), and pharmacy (PharmD) students. Methods: The Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Scale (ICCAS) was used to measure students' self-reported attainment of interprofessional competencies before and after the IPE experience. Pre-and post-test surveys were completed by NP/MW, DDS, MD, and PharmD student cohorts from 2017 to 2019. Students also had the opportunity to provide qualitative feedback about their experience at post-test. Data were collected from IPE faculty facilitators to assess their perception of the value of the Teaching Oral-Systemic Health (TOSH) program. Results: Student ICCAS results demonstrated statistically significant improvement in self-reported interprofessional competencies among all types of students across all 3 years (P < 0.001); qualitative student comments reflected positive experiences with the TOSH program. Survey data from IPE faculty facilitators supported the value of the IPE experience for all students. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the TOSH program in using oral-systemic health as a clinical exemplar to develop interprofessional competencies. The 2017-2019 data reinforce the credibility of scaling the TOSH model for developing interprofessional competencies with students from different health professions. K E Y W O R D S interprofessional education, oral health, oral health disparities, oral systemic-links 1 INTRODUCTION A need for "radical public health action" to address the serious problem about neglect of oral health and its links to overall health is illuminated in the recent Lancet series on oral health. 1 Globally, oral disease, including tooth decay, periodontitis, and oral cancers, are the most prevalent oral conditions. 2 A higher prevalence for these conditions are
Frontiers in dental medicine, 2021
For several decades, health professions education has been transforming; pedagogical constructs such as active learning, recorded lectures, electronic assessment, asynchronous content delivery, and interprofessional education and practice. However, the typical oral health curriculum has need for further transformation to ensure graduates' ability to function in an integrated health system. There is significant literature outlining associations between oral health and overall health, therefore, it is paramount that oral health learners develop skills to collaborate in an integrated model. Satcher, in 2000, outlined the gravity of oral health inequities and the importance of oral health. He said, "Too little time is devoted to oral health and disease topics in the education of non-dental health professional." However, on the contrary typical oral health curriculum provide knowledge acquisition of topics related to overall health but isn't specifically designed to guide integrated care. In order to increase integrated care, groups like the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) have developed competencies for interprofessional education and collaborative practice that guides the training of health professionals. One way to improve integration is accreditation standards that guide transformation as well incorporate IPEC competencies. Having competencies is important to prepare learners to function in clinics like Kaiser Permanente's medical-dental integration model that rely upon teams and teamwork and clarity of roles and responsibilities. This manuscript outlines principle of oral health curriculum that facilitate graduates ability to work in an integrated health system and how that contributes to the improvement overall health of patients.
The Impact of Oral-Systemic Health on Advancing Interprofessional Education Outcomes
Journal of dental education, 2017
The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an interprofessional education (IPE) clinical simulation and case study experience, using oral-systemic health as the clinical population health example, for nurse practitioner/midwifery, dental, and medical students' self-reported attainment of interprofessional competencies. A pretest-posttest evaluation method was employed, using data from the Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Scale (ICCAS) completed by two large cohorts of nurse practitioner/midwifery, dental, and medical students at one U.S. university. Data from faculty facilitators were collected to assess their perceptions of the value of exposing students to interprofessional clinical simulation experiences focused on oral-systemic health. The results showed that self-reported interprofessional competencies measured by the ICCAS improved significantly from pre- to posttest for all three student types in 2013 (p<0.001) and 2014 (p<0.001)...
BMC Oral Health
Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is an important part of the landscape of modern education. However, there is a significant deficiency of studies that evaluate IPE in dentistry. The aim of this article is to evaluate the effects of an oral health educational program on the dental knowledge, awareness, attitude, confidence, and behavior of pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) students and to emphasize the importance of IPE for PNP. Methods: First-year pediatric nurse practitioners from Northeastern University participated in an IPE oral health education seminal and practical session as a pilot study. Several tests were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the educational program. The post-test assessed the knowledge, awareness, attitude, confidence, and behavior of the students immediately after attending the lecture; again immediately after hands on experience; and finally at a follow-up approximately a month after attending the training module. The training module consists of prevention and anticipatory guidance; caries process and management; trauma and dental emergencies. Differences in score items were evaluated between 4 time points. Friedman's, Wilcoxon signed-rank and McNemar's tests were used to analyze the results. Results: Knowledge score was determined based on the number of correct responses to seven questions, while awareness score was based on the median of eight questions. Fifteen confidence, attitude, and behavior questions were used. The total sample size was 16 students with a mean age 33.31 ± 7.52. The majority were females (87.5%). Significant improvement was seen in all subjects' overall knowledge of oral health topics. The confidence, attitude, and behavior scores were differed by time of test (P < 0.01). It was the highest after post-test and the lowest in pretest. Conclusion: Our study suggests that introducing an Interprofessional education program for pediatric nurse practitioner students can provide them with adequate knowledge, awareness, confidence, and attitude regarding oral health issues. It also can help them in changing behavior, prevention and ongoing dental surveillance.
Interprofessional Clinical Experiences in Dental Education
Current Oral Health Reports, 2014
Interest and activity in interprofessional education (IPE) has grown substantially in recent years across the health professions, driven by the belief that more effective interprofessional collaboration among providers will contribute to realization of the Triple Aim objectives articulated by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement-better individual care experiences, better population health, and reduced per capita cost of care. In dental education, new standards from the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) in 2013 require that dental schools demonstrate that graduates are competent to communicate and collaborate with other health professionals, requiring dental educators to develop IPE curricula and assessment at their institutions. One of the more challenging aspects of IPE curriculum development is to provide meaningful interprofessional clinical experiences for students. The purpose of this paper is to review selected examples of interprofessional clinical experiences involving dental students and to describe an interprofessional clinical experience implemented at the authors' institution.
Improving the oral health knowledge of osteopathic medical students
Journal of dental education, 2002
Due to a complex set of circumstances including culture, poverty, low educational achievement, and limited access to dental care, the oral health of rural Appalachians is poorer than that of people in other parts of Kentucky. Limited health care dollars go to primary medical care which may be the only contact these individuals have with the health care system. Consequently, primary care physicians can help improve oral health. The University of Kentucky College of Dentistry (UKCD) and the Pikeville College School of Osteopathic Medicine (PCSOM) developed an oral health education block for third-year PCSOM students. Eleven UKCD faculty and one PCSOM faculty participated in the two-day, sixteen-hour oral health curriculum. Knowledge retention data from the post-tests was collected four months after the educational program. Students significantly improved their performance in six of the topic areas, with performance staying the same in one area and dropping significantly in one area. F...