THE CONTENTS, METHODS, AND ASSESSMENT OF EVIDENCE-BASED DENTISTRY EDUCATION: A SCOPING REVIEW

OBJECTIVE

With evidence-based dentistry (EBD) having a far-reaching influence on oral healthcare, dental educators worldwide have made joint efforts to integrate EBD-related knowledge and skills into dental education. The present scoping review aims to identify and summarize the existing teaching contents, teaching methods, and assessment strategies of EBD education.

METHODS

Electronic (PubMed and Embase) and manual searches were performed to identify articles related to both "dental education" and "evidence-based practice." Based on predetermined eligibility criteria, articles were selected by 2 reviewers, independently and in duplicate. Data synthesis was conducted based on teaching contents, teaching strategies, and teaching assessment.

RESULTS

Of the 1758 articles found in the literature searches, 74 were deemed eligible and included in this review. A total of 4 basic skills (problem formulation, literature searching, critical appraisal, and research methodology), 5 teaching methods, and 6 assessment strategies were identified. In most of the articles, 2, or more skills were taught, and a combination of traditional strategies for teaching and its assessment (eg, courses and questionnaire survey) was involved. Other teaching methods, such as journal clubs and workshops, were seldom used, and validated assessment tools accounted for a relatively small proportion of the assessment strategies involved.

CONCLUSIONS

The contents, methods and assessment of EBD education have been widely studied and discussed. However, the current literature focuses mainly on teaching of critical appraisal skills, traditional teaching methods, and short-term outcome assessments. Future research in this area can be aimed at integrating all EBD-related skills into educational models, studying multifaceted teaching approaches, and developing comprehensive teaching outcome assessment methods based on validated tools and dental patient-reported outcomes.

Presence of management, entrepreneurship, leadership and marketing topics in the dental school curriculum in Brazil

INTRODUCTION

To analyse the presence and characteristics of curricular components related to management, entrepreneurship, leadership and marketing as part of the structure and teaching methods of undergraduate courses in dentistry in Brazil.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This is an observational study that used the Ministry of Education's Undergraduate Course Accreditation Platform, which included 424 undergraduate courses in Dentistry on the last date of collection (August 31 2019). The following items were analysed as follows: the existence of curricular components in relation to the proposed themes, the most recurring denominations of curricular components, minimum and maximum workload, mandatory/optional classification, theoretical/practical teaching condition and in which year the curricular components were inserted.

RESULTS

367/424 (86.6%) of dentistry courses in Brazil included at least one of the topics: management, entrepreneurship, leadership and marketing curricular components in their curriculum, whilst 57/424 (13.4%) did not have these curricular components in their curricular structure. The most frequent names were "Management" 99 (45.21%) and "Entrepreneurship" 80 (36.5%). There was a predominance of the "theoretical method" and the number of hours varied considerably, with the most common course hours between 40 and 60 h. The majority of curricular components were inserted in the third to fifth year and offered on a compulsory basis.

CONCLUSION

Most curricular matrices of dentistry courses in Brazil had components related to the topics studied. However, due to the variety of curricular components' names, hours, periods of courses and different teaching methodologies, there is a need to redesign the teaching and learning process, defining educational and evaluation models with common curricular components.