Changes In Dental Education Research Articles

Strategic Management and Organizational Behavior in Dental Education: Reflections on Key Issues in an Environment of Change

With issues such as shrinking revenue, access to care, faculty workloads, and graying faculty, dental schools are faced with difficult challenges that fall to dental school deans to manage. Do dental school deans have the organizational skill sets and ethical frameworks necessary to address the challenges now facing dental schools? The purpose of this article is to pose questions and suggestions regarding some of the key issues in dental colleges today and to stimulate discussion in the dental community about needed changes in dental education.

Willing, Ready, and Able? How We Must Exercise Leadership for Needed Change in Dental Education

For over twenty-five years, dental education has had the benefit of environmental analyses and institutional planning for change. Strong programs for leadership development have emerged to give direction to these efforts. Leading and thriving, not merely surviving, are universal aspirations, yet we remain vexed by finances, structures, and traditions. This article takes a look at change and examines the difference between technical frameworks for leadership and adaptive leadership. Leadership for change is viewed as an activity, not as a position of formal authority. The skills necessary to address the beliefs, attitudes, and culture that place limiting boundaries on adaptive leadership are described. Using the work of Heifetz and Linsky, the relationship between authority and adaptive leadership is defined. Resistance to change is presented as reaction to loss, which needs to be addressed in a fundamental way, through leadership activity and engagement. If change and innovation are to be sustained, leadership must be less accidental, less technical, and more adaptive.

Managing Change in Dental Education: Is There a Method to the Madness?

The literature surrounding dental education in the United States is replete with calls for change in the way that dental students are being educated. These calls are being echoed with curriculum models and examples of best practices, but what is missing is specific information about how to implement a desired change-that is, discussion of the change process itself. Knowledge of the organizational change process in other settings, particularly in higher education and professional education, may be of interest to academic program managers in dental schools who are planning or are engaged in change. Historical and theoretical perspectives on organizations and change are presented in this article as groundwork for more detailed discussion about management of change. Seventeen research-based principles of change in higher education and factors in dental education that influence change processes and outcomes are presented and synthesized into guidelines for a hypothetical model for change in a dental school environment. Issues pertinent to the practical management of change are presented, including reframing organizational complexity, change leadership, values/competence/commitment, and organizational learning. An appreciation for change as an ongoing and manageable process will enhance a dental school's viability in a rapidly changing world and ultimately benefit dental graduates and the communities they serve.

ADEE Proceedings 2007

33rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Dental Education in Europe, Structural Changes in Dental Education, 4 – 5 September 2007 in Dublin, Ireland

The Revitalization of U.S. Dental Education

The Revitalization of U.S. Dental Education

Revising Accreditation Processes and Standards to Address Current Challenges in Dental Education

Accreditation is an important lever for change in dental education. It is an agent, and agency, that has stimulated and guided contemporary dental education for nearly a century. In this summary, I present a case for revising accreditation processes and standards in order to address the challenges

Coda's Accreditation Of Graduate Dental Anesthesiology Programs: A Benefit To All Dental Education

Coda's Accreditation Of Graduate Dental Anesthesiology Programs: A Benefit To All Dental Education

Curriculum Restructuring at a North American Dental School: Rationale for Change

The purpose of this article is to discuss how traditional dental school curricula are inconsistent with research in how learners learn. In the last ten years, there has been considerable discussion about the need for dental education reform, and innovative changes have occurred in the curricula of a number of U.S. dental schools. However, efforts in curriculum restructuring have been hindered by the lack of evidence that one specific curriculum design achieves outcomes superior to other designs. Moreover, there has been little discussion in the dental literature about how modern theories of learning can provide a sound rationale for change in dental education. Thus, it is important for those involved in curriculum reform to present the rationale for change based on the best available evidence. In this review, we summarize aspects of research on learning that seem applicable to dental education and outline ways in which curricula might be changed to become more consistent with the evidence.

Academic Tenure and Higher Education in the United States: Implications for the Dental Education Workforce in the Twenty‐First Century

This article reviews the literature related to the evolution and implementation of academic tenure (AT) in U.S. higher education. It is intended to highlight AT implications for the recruitment, retention, and development of the dental education workforce in the twenty-first century and the need for this workforce to implement change in dental education. The dental education workforce is shrinking, and a further decrease is projected, yet the demand for dental education is increasing. AT is becoming increasingly controversial, and the proportion of tenured to nontenured (i.e., contingent) faculty is declining within an already shrinking faculty pool. Confusion regarding the definition of scholarship and its relationship to research and publishing further confounds discussions about AT. Whether the principles of academic freedom and due process require tenure for their preservation in a democratic society is open to question. In view of competing time demands and increasing pressure to publish and apply for grants, factors including the seven-year probationary period for tenure, the decreased availability of tenured positions, and the often perceived inequities between tenured and contingent (i.e., nontenured track) faculty may pose an obstacle to faculty recruitment and retention. These factors may severely limit the diversity and skill mix of the dental education workforce, resulting in a decrease in staffing flexibility that appears to be needed in the twenty-first century. Politics, increasing dependence on grant funding by some institutions, resistance to change, and insufficient mentoring are all stimulating discussions about the future of tenure and its implications for U.S. dental education.

The Case for Change in Dental Education

This article introduces a series of white papers developed by the ADEA Commission on Change and Innovation (CCI) to explore the case for change in dental education. This preamble to the series argues that there is a compelling need for rethinking the approach to dental education in the United States. Three issues facing dental education are explored: 1) the challenging financial environment of higher education, making dental schools very expensive and tuition-intensive for universities to operate and producing high debt levels for students that limit access to education and restrict career choices; 2) the profession's apparent loss of vision for taking care of the oral health needs of all components of society and the resultant potential for marginalization of dentistry as a specialized health care service available only to the affluent; and 3) the nature of dental school education itself, which has been described as convoluted, expensive, and often deeply dissatisfying to its students.

Pipeline, Profession, and Practice Program: Evaluating Change in Dental Education

This article describes the conceptual and analytical framework that will be used to assess the effectiveness of the Pipeline, Profession, and Practice: Community-Based Dental Education Program. The evaluation will use a mixed method qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis, and triangulation. Baseline measures are reported using data from the 2003 ADEA survey of dental school seniors. Baseline measures show the dental schools are confronting a major recruitment challenge that will require short and long pipeline efforts to attract and retain underrepresented and low-income (URM/LI) persons. Gaps were found between the perceptions of URM and non-URM students in the adequacy of the curricula. The majority of all seniors described the current extramural clinical rotations as positive experiences, but URMs were more likely to report the experience improved their ability to care for diverse groups.

Variation, Certainty, Evidence, and Change in Dental Education: Employing Evidence‐Based Dentistry in Dental Education

Variation in health care, and more particularly in dental care, was recently chronicled in a Readers Digest investigative report. The conclusions of this report are consistent with sound scientific studies conducted in various areas of health care, including dental care, which demonstrate substantial variation in the care provided to patients. This variation in care parallels the certainty with which clinicians and faculty members often articulate strongly held, but very different opinions. Using a case-based dental scenario, we present systematic evidence-based methods for accessing dental health care information, evaluating this information for validity and importance, and using this information to make informed curricular and clinical decisions. We also discuss barriers inhibiting these systematic approaches to evidence-based clinical decision making and methods for effectively promoting behavior change in health care professionals.

Clinical diagnosis of precavitated carious lesions

During the 20th century, dental caries was usually diagnosed using tactile-visual criteria that detected the presence of cavitation rather than measured the disease process as a continuum that starts from the appearance of microporosity, as a result of demineralization, to the occurrence of cavitation. With increasing understanding of the dental caries process and the role of primary and secondary prevention in arresting it, sensitive and specific diagnostic systems are needed that could enable dentists to detect signs of early demineralization and possible progression of precavitated carious lesions before the occurrence of cavitation. In this review of the literature, published validity studies of diagnosis of precavitated lesions were reviewed. Overall, the current clinical diagnostic systems have low sensitivity and moderate specificity. Good reliability of diagnosing precavitated carious lesions could be obtained for diagnosing pits and fissures but for smooth tooth surfaces the reliability is poor. As our diagnostic capability of precavitated lesions improves, there is a need for a significant change in dental education, dental insurance, and dental practice to reward dentists for promoting oral health and preserving tooth structure. In this paper, a new model for classifying carious lesions based upon the type of intervention strategies is proposed to assist in this new approach of caries management.

DENTAL EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS: A REPORT BY THE INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE

Today's dental schools confront an environment in higher education and health care that promises less stable financing and, thus, more uncertainty for faculty, students, researchers and administrators. A new report from the Institute of Medicine underscores the need for changes in dental education to prepare for a future that will in many important ways be quite different from the past.

AIDS‐related changes in dental education

AIDS‐related changes in dental education

Research on oral diseases and its impact on dental education and practice.

In recent years advances in dental research have marked the integration of dental science into the mainstream of biomedical research, with dental investigators employing the same cell and molecular biology techniques that have revolutionized the biosciences. Examples include the isolation and cloning of genes essential to the development of teeth and bones, discoveries of numerous extracellular factors that guide the growth and differentiation of cells and aid in tissue repair and regeneration, the development of a technique for producing human monoclonal antibodies, and the use of recombinant DNA techniques to generate mutant forms of oral bacteria. At the same time, dental research continues to make strides in more traditional pursuits. Thus, we are seeing continued advances in dental diagnostics, in the generation of new materials and methods for restorations and replacements of natural teeth, and an increase in approaches aimed at preventing or reversing the major dental diseases: dental caries and the periodontal diseases. Recent epidemiological studies highlight the gains that have been made in the oral health status of Americans and are helping shape the research agenda of the National Institute of Dental Research in the years ahead. Greater emphasis will be put on the oral health problems of adults and older Americans and those of any age who are at high risk for oral problems. Advances in research, evident in changing patterns of disease, have become the major force for change in dental education and practice. Future practitioners will need a broader intellectual preparation that will enable them to diagnose and treat a wide range of oral tissue conditions. Many dental schools are showing their willingness and ability to rise to the challenge of changing demands, assuring a promising future for the "new dentistry".

Planned change and the future of the dental education system

Dentistry today faces an environment that clearly requires changes in dental education. Future dentists must be prepared to deal with new patterns of dental disease, revised manpower requirements, and new developments in the nature of dental practice. The dental education system can best adapt to this situation by initiating a process of planned change. A well-developed literature in this area provides both a theoretical framework and a practical approach that the dental education system can follow in its planning process. In this paper, the principles of planned change are interpreted in the context of dental schools' characteristic structure, goals, leadership, and communication mechanisms. The traits of successful change and specific strategies for achieving it are offered as a means for the dental education system to build with confidence a productive and healthy future.

Dental education and dental practice.

This paper relates recent modes of dental practice to changes that the public and government are likely to ask the health care professions to make in the future. As usual they are asking for the best of all worlds. First, that we maintain the clinical model to the highest standards of personal dental care based and tested against the best research at our disposal, whilst we ensure there is no reduction in the high technical standards for which british dentists have a reputation. Second, that the profession is required to consider ways of providing care on the medicosocial model for the whole community at an economic level the country will afford. The broad changes in dental education have been reviewed, from the technical apprenticeship to the establishment of strong university departments in teaching hospitals. The importance of a sound biomedical foundation and of research both to education and the credibility of dental practice as a primary health care profession is stressed if the profession is to retain its position as a sister to medicine and not slide down to that of a technical ancillary.

Computer simulation of selected curriculum changes in dental education

Computer simulation of selected curriculum changes in dental education

Proposals for planned change in dental education and practice.

Proposals for planned change in dental education and practice.