Journal of dental education
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The purpose of this study was to determine factors that are associated with increased individual research productivity among clinical faculty in 67 United States and Canadian schools of dentistry. Individual faculty research productivity was defined as the total number of articles in refereed journals and book chapters published during an academic career. The 328 respondents represented a response rate of 62.8 percent from a 25 percent stratified random sample of faculty who (1) had full-time appointments and held at least the D. ⋯ Respondents reported a mean of 9.9 years in full-time dental education, a mean of 10.8 publications, and a mean of 7.5 hours spent in research per week. Forward addition multiple regression analysis demonstrated that five predictor variables, from a total of 20 variables evaluated, accounted for 59.9 percent of the variance in individual faculty research productivity. These predictor variables were total dollar amount of past research funding, career age, training status, colleague utilization in conducting research, and conducting research from planned goals.
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A survey of the patient debt management policies of all U. S.-accredited dental and dental hygiene educational programs was taken to assess institutional patient debt management procedures and their relationship to student academic progress. The policies were evaluated to determine the level of compliance with existing standards and to analyze them in light of their legal implications relative to student rights. ⋯ The question of the legal validity of conditioning academic progress on third party payments for services was then examined. It is the opinion of the authors that the translation of a student's successful performance in a clinic setting to an academic failure or incomplete based on a patient's failure to pay for services is likely not legally defendable. Thus, it is essential that policies on fee collection and patient debt management not be tied to issues of student academic progress.
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This study examines how teaching performance is evaluated in U. S. dental schools. Respondents to the mailed survey were dental school deans. ⋯ The majority of schools provide a program to enhance teaching skills; responsibility for the program varied from the department chairperson to the individual faculty member. More than half of the deans indicated that research productivity can "outweigh" teaching skills in promotion and tenure decisions. The results indicate that dental school deans expect excellence in teaching, but leave doubt as to how faculty members are to gain expertise in this realm of their profession.