Journal of dental education
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Dental institutions in the United States are reeling from the consequences of the novel SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, the causative agent of CODIV-19. As oral health care providers, we have been trained on prevention of aerosol transmissible diseases, but we are still grappling with many unknown factors regarding COVID-19. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Dental Association (ADA), and local state agencies are releasing updates on guidelines for dentists and patients, no official information exists for dental institutions on how to effectively follow the recommended guidelines including "shelter in place" with social distancing to protect students, faculty, staff, and patients, and still ensure continuity of dental education. This article discusses the challenges that we face currently and offers some simple strategies to bridge the gaps in dental education to overcome this emergency.
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The number of citations an article receives is an important indicator to quantify its influence in its field. The aim of this study was to identify and analyze the characteristics of the 50 top-cited articles addressing dental education published in two journals dedicated to dental education (European Journal of Dental Education and Journal of Dental Education). The Web of Science database was searched to retrieve the 50 most-cited articles from the two journals in December 2018. ⋯ The most common study types were surveys (n=26) and reviews (n=10). The main themes of these top-cited articles were curriculum and learner characteristics. This bibliometric analysis can serve as a reference for recognizing studies with the most impact in the scholarship of dental education.
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Dental diseases are a major burden on health; however, they are largely preventable. Dental treatment alone will not eradicate dental disease with a shift to prevention required. Prevention of dental diseases is a role of dental professionals, with most countries having formalized health promotion competencies for dental and oral health graduates. ⋯ However, for all studies the health promotion content was focused on health education. In terms of evaluation of outcomes, only two studies evaluated the health promotion content using student reflections. More good-quality information on health promotions training is needed to inform practice.
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The promotion and tenure process for faculty members varies, by design, for different disciplines, departments, and academic institutions. For many faculty members in U. S. dental schools, the process may thus appear nebulous and be difficult to navigate. ⋯ Hybrid tracks empower faculty members to successfully perform scholarly activities that realistically reflect institutional missions. The authors of this article conclude with a number of practical suggestions to enhance development and retention of faculty using the hybrid promotion and tenure mechanism. These include demonstrating the congruence of institutional mission, faculty activities, and promotion and tenure guidelines; developing scholarly activities for clinician-educators that can be measured in the promotion and tenure process; rewarding scholarly achievement for clinician-educators utilizing the promotion and tenure mechanism; and developing an evaluation system that accounts for changes in mission and faculty activities.
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Patient-centered care involves an inseparable set of knowledge, abilities, and professional traits on the part of the health care provider. For practical reasons, health professions education is segmented into disciplines or domains like knowledge, technical skills, and critical thinking, and the culture of dental education is weighted toward knowledge and technical skills. ⋯ Prominent among these guidelines are the following: engage the student in multiple situations/exercises reflecting critical thinking; for each exercise, emulate the intended activity for validity; gain agreement of faculty members across disciplines and curriculum years on the learning construct, application, and performance assessment protocol for reliability; and use the same instrument to guide learning and assess performance. The purposes of this article are 1) to offer a set of concepts from the education literature potentially helpful to guide program design or corroborate existing programs in dental education; 2) to offer an implementation model consolidating these concepts as a guide for program design and execution; 3) to cite specific examples of exercises and programs in critical thinking in the dental education literature analyzed against these concepts; and 4) to discuss opportunities and challenges in guiding student learning and assessing performance in critical thinking for dentistry.