Journal of dental education
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The clinical findings that dentists use to estimate the future caries activity of patients are imperfect. Almost invariably there are protective factors in patients who go on to develop clinical caries and there are risk factors that persist in patients who do not develop clinical caries. Therefore, the clinical decision process is characterized by a level of uncertainty concerning the selection of patient management strategies for caries. ⋯ We need to have a better understanding of how clinicians process clinically available risk information. We need to determine what additional risk assessment information will improve the clinician's ability to identify high-risk patients. We also need to establish whether there are differences in the usefulness of additional risk information depending on the level of experience of the clinician.
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Comparative Study
Checklist agreement between standardized patients and faculty.
The agreement between standardized patients' (SPs) and faculty in scoring student performance is an important component in determining the accuracy of SP assessment scores. For this study, checklist scores completed by SPs were compared to checklists completed by faculty. The SPs completed the checklists immediately following each SP-student interaction. ⋯ Agreement between SPs and faculty was good especially in later cases. Discrepancies were most often due to SPs assigning credit when the faculty did not. This study supports the use of SPs as accurate, relatively inexpensive, and feasible recorders of student performance for selected skills.
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Figure 4 shows the mean unadjusted revenue-per-student by program type. Advanced Education General Dentistry programs had the highest revenue-per-student this year and in two of the three previous years. Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery programs generated the second highest mean amount of clinic revenue-per-student, followed by General Practice Residencies, Orthodontic programs, and Prosthodontic programs. ⋯ A review of the information for each program shows that there are significant variations in these data from school to school. These variations could be caused by different accounting procedures as well as differences in program size and location. Consequently, these data are best viewed in general terms.
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Despite increasing national attention and emphasis on primary health care, there has been little impetus to define or specify the content of primary oral health care. This paper defines primary oral health care and the scope of services it includes, using an adaptation of a Health Resources and Services Administration definition of primary health care and its attributes as its model. The proposed scope of services encompassed by primary oral health care is a set of basic dental services used by the Indian Health Service. Policy recommendations are presented to improve the integration of primary oral health services with primary health care and primary health care delivery.