Undergraduate education in Brazil: the students’ curricular perspective of Dental care training

• Autor(a) principal: Garbin, Clea Adas Saliba
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Saliba, Tania Adas, Garbin, Artenio José Ísper, Custodio, Lia Borges de Mattos, Moimaz, Suzely Adas Saliba
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista da ABENO (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revabeno.emnuvens.com.br/revabeno/article/view/784
• topic: Education; Dental. Problem-Based Learning. Clinical Competence. Academic Success.; Educação em Odontologia. Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas. Competência Clínica. Sucesso Acadêmico.

Contemporary Dental practice poses many challenges to the dental surgeon; thus, the academic training must enable practitioners to deal with the constant changes in the techniques and the difficulties in clinic’s management. This study aimed to analyze the students' perceptions on their training competencies. This was a cross-sectional study carried out with 89 undergraduate students in the final years of training in Dentistry at a public university in the State of São Paulo in 2018. The students responded to a semi-structured instrument composed of 17 items on skills adapted from the National Dental Examining Board and the students’ perception on the dimensions of importance, confidence in the execution and contribution of the training environments (i.e., classroom and clinical setting) was analyzed for each of the skills assessed. Importance, confidence and training environments were evaluated according to the Likert’s scale, ranging from 1 (no relevance) to 5 (extremely relevant). The data analysis was performed at a significance level of 5%. There were statistically significant positive correlations between importance and confidence for competencies related to patient records, treatment planning, health determinants, pulp pathologies, and restorative and surgical procedures. It was also observed that skills related to management/administration had the lowest mean for confidence. It was concluded that students understand that competency is essential for their training high as well as confidence to perform clinical procedures. However, administrative procedures need to be improved.