Dental Education About Patients with Special Needs: A Survey of U.S. and Canadian Dental Schools

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153605/1/jddj0022033720107411tb04991x.pd

Special Care Dentistry Curriculum at The Undergraduate Level : Students’ Prespective

Special needs patients (SNP) have difficulty accessing dental services, partly due to reluctance of dentists to treat them. Objective: We assess didactic and clinical training experiences of final-year dental students and new graduates in managing SNP. Methods: An online questionnaire was sent to 123 final year dental students and new graduates, assessing their experiences and readiness in handling SNP. Results: Majority of the respondents were not confident in attending to SNP. Majority gained knowledge in handling SNP via lectures while more than half had managed patients with complex medical history. Majority mentioned a lack of clinical training to treat SNP as their dental training experience had only been in a dental school clinical setting. Most of the respondents hope their curriculum would include more education to improve clinical skills in managing SNP. Conclusion: Respondents demonstrated minimum training and lack of confidence and skills that might contribute to a lack of preparedness to manage the oral health care needs of SNP. Clinical exposure in managing SNP at the undergraduate level is still inadequate and it needs to be emphasized in the curriculum.DOI: 10.14693/jdi.v22i3.976

General Dentists and Special Needs Patients: Does Dental Education Matter?

Special needs patients are one of the underserved dental patient groups in the United States. This study investigates whether undergraduate dental education about special needs patients affects general dentists’ a) professional behavior, b) practice characteristics, and c) attitudes concerning special needs patients. Data were collected from 208 general dentists (178 male/30 female; average age: 49.85 years) who were members of the Michigan Dental Association. The more the respondents agreed that dental education had prepared them well, the more likely they were to treat various types of special needs patients and to set up their practices so they could treat them and the more they liked treating these patients. In conclusion, most general dentists did not think their undergraduate dental education had prepared them well to treat special needs patients. However, the better they reported to have been educated, the more likely they were to treat special needs patients. Given the access to care problems for many special needs patients, it seems crucial to revise dental curricula and provide more didactic and clinical education concerning the treatment of special needs patients.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153731/1/jddj0022033720056910tb04011x.pd