1Post graduate Student Department of Public Health Dentistry, Dayananda Sagar College of Dental, Sciences, Bangalore
2Reader Department of Public Health Dentistry, Dayananda Sagar College of Dental, Sciences, Bangalore
3Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Dayananda Sagar College of Dental, Sciences, Bangalore
Online published on 6 September, 2018.
A dental graduate should have skills, understanding and professional values ready for beginning independent dental practice. To remain viable, the dental curriculum should not remain static, but must develop in the light of both the present and anticipated needs of the community.
The aim of this study was to assess the self-reported confidence levels among interns from the dental colleges of Bangalore city, in performing a variety of unsupervised dental procedures commonly completed in primary dental care settings.
A questionnaire was distributed to 509 interns from all the dental colleges of Bangalore city. Information requested was related to the respondents confidence in performing a variety of routine clinical tasks, using a five-point scale (1= not confident, 5= very confident). Descriptive statistics are reported.
The majority of the participants reported to be confident in performing procedures like ‘history and examination’ (Confident; n=303, 59.53%; Very confident; n=53, 10.41%), caries diagnosis (Confident; n=290, 56.97%; Very confident; n=135, 26.52%), diagnosis of tooth wear (Confident; n=291, 57.17%; Very confident; n=91, 17.88%), ‘oral hygiene instruction’ (Confident; n=283, 55.60%; Very confident; n=157, 30.84%) and ‘fissure sealants’ (Confident; n=275, 54.03%; Very confident; n=95, 18.66%). Participants were not confident in performing surgical procedures like ‘management of space infections’ (n=212, 41.65%), and procedures like ‘designing metal partial dentures’ (n=224, 44.01%), ‘molar endodontics’ (n=214, 42.04%) and ‘veneer preparation’ (n=290, 56.97%).
The interns in Bangalore city were more confident in performing simple procedures like scaling and polishing, pit and fissure sealant placement, giving oral hygiene instructions, placing restorations, fabrication of removable prosthesis and simple extractions. Participants lacked confidence in various complex procedures like endodontics, fabrication of fixed prosthesis, crown preparation, veneer preparation, managing special cases and a variety of surgical procedures. Confidence levels to conduct clinical research was reported to be very low.
Confidence, Dental practice, Interns, Dental curriculum, Practice management, Dental colleges
