ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the application of the Simodont dental trainer in preclinical manual dexterity training for dental students of different grades, and to discuss its effect by quantitatively evaluating their practice results.Methods:The evaluation was conducted among 118 students in the Department of Stomatology, Shantou University Medical College from Batch 2015 to Batch 2018. Each student had five different manual dexterity modules for training. Each module had three levels of difficulty and was required to be completed in 30 minutes. The assessment index included Target, Leeway Bottom and Sides, Container Bottom and Sides, which was provided by the Simodont dental trainer. The operating time (in seconds), the displacement of the dental hand pieces and the dental mirrors (in meters) were simultaneously recorded. SPSS 25.0 was used for statistical analysis.Results:For the index Target, Leeway Bottom and Sides, Container Bottom and Sides, the results showed that there was a statistical difference between students who passed pre-clinical training and who did not take the professional course ( P < 0.001). For the index Target, differences were showed among students from different grades in all modules ( P < 0.001). Conclusion:The circle module, channel module, hollow-circle module and cross-module in the Simodont dental trainer have sensitivity to discriminate the manual dexterity of different levels of dental students. The further assessment of the discrimination of the manual dexterity is required for assume-block module. The Simodont dental trainer can quantitatively measure the manual dexterity of dental students, which is important for the quantitative evaluation of dental preclinical education.