Using program yield to guide dental educational process improvement

ISSUE

Dental education is a complex system of activities repeated on an annual cycle. Small adjustments are constant in an effort to improve the overall performance of the process. While it is possible to evaluate each change in isolation against standards particular to their circumstances, it is ultimately necessary to ensure that the set of changes has an overall positive impact on the program as a whole.

APPROACH

It is valuable to have a school-wide criterion for choosing the best portfolio of constituent activities. This perspective piece describes the use of one such standard: program yield, defined as the proportion of students who are recognized as competent practitioners within a few months of the anticipated graduation date. The success of one program that used this approach is described. It is also suggested that dental education is a cyclical process that involves the four classical components of the quality movement. These are described as Goal, Experience, Assessment, and Refection in this paper.

IMPACT

This is the first of three related perspectives. The other two are devoted to quality assurance and improvement and the challenge of transferring innovations published in the literature to application in other schools. The common theme in these perspectives is the value of driving improvement in dental education by focus on the outcome variable.

Creating a Supportive Educational Research Culture at a Dental School by Identifying Obstacles and Solutions

The aim of this study was to identify the extent of educational research conducted at one U.S. dental school and to assess faculty needs for engaging in it more fully. A task force developed and administered a survey to all the school's full-time faculty members in January 2014. The response rate was 73.6% (n=106/144). The majority of the respondents were clinicians (73%), had a primary responsibility for teaching (80%), and were non-tenure track (62%). Thirty-six percent (n=24) of the non-tenure-track respondents reported being expected to engage in scholarship as well as the 38% (n=40) who were on the tenure track, for a total of 60% (n=64/106). Overall, 51% of respondents reported they had a half-day or less for scholarship. Clinical faculty respondents had significantly less time for scholarship than non-clinical (p<0.001). Two-thirds (n=72, 68%) said they had not received research training, and over half (n=56, 53%) had never conducted educational research. The most common answers for why respondents did not conduct educational research were "do not know how" (n=32%) and "not required" (n=23%). Help with statistical analysis was reported as the most important support factor, followed by having collaborators, help with research design, time, funding, and travel. While overall interest in conducting educational research was moderate (median=5 on a 1-10 scale, IQR=3,8), a highly interested group (n=45) had produced more research than others (p≤0.041). This group desired more small grants (91%) and training opportunities (89%, p≤0.001). In response to one of the findings of this study, a small-grant program of $15,000 annually for educational research was implemented in May 2014. Funded by this program, 11 projects have been initiated with both scholarship and learning improvement outcomes.