Perceptions of a comprehensive dental care teaching clinic among stakeholders in a dental teaching hospital in South India: A baseline assessment

Abstract

BackgroundWhen the dentist starts practicing independently, they need to plan and treat comprehensively and prioritise the procedures accordingly. This contrasts with dental students learning years where they deal with only a clinical subject during a fixed period. To improve this scenario a comprehensive dental care teaching clinic was introduced, and baseline assessment was performed. MethodsThe perceptions of patients, dental undergraduate students, clinical instructors, and clinic co-ordinators regarding Comprehensive Dental Care was evaluated by a cross sectional survey. The questionnaire was developed through a focus group discussion and content validation was performed by experts. Three domains including orientation to the clinics, clinical training of undergraduates and clinic management were assessed. Descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS. ResultsThe results reveal, 53.5% of undergraduate students and 61.3% of clinic instructors agreeing that students trained under comprehensive system can confidently manage patients independently. Good collaboration (80%) among the dental team and regular monitoring of the clinic management (80%) were reported by clinic co-ordinators. The challenges ahead for this teaching clinic includes instrument and facilities availability, which has found to higher disagreement percentages by undergraduate students (43.7%), clinic instructors (38.7%) as well as clinic co-ordinators (50%). Patient satisfaction for all three domains were noted to be high. ConclusionWith the introduction of the comprehensive dental care teaching clinic better patient management and improved clinical training of undergraduate students were reported by the stakeholders. This new system is a major shift in dental service delivery and can be adopted to similar settings to improve patient care and dental education.