ABSTRACT
Aim: To investigate dental students' self-reported confidence in learning about various domains of patient safety during their clinical training years. Methods: The Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey (H-PEPSS) was distributed to the fourth- and fifth-year undergraduate students, interns and postgraduate dental students. The survey explores how the seven domains of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute Safety Competencies Framework and wider cases of patient safety issues are presented in dental education, as well as participants' self-reported comfortability regarding revealing about patient safety issues. A comparison of the patient safety domains scores were assessed through learning scenarios (classroom and clinical), gender, level of study and type of institution. Results: Out of 409 participants, 359 undergraduate dental students and 131 postgraduate dental students responded to the survey. Irrespective of the groups, all dental students were most confident regarding their learning aspects about skills pertaining to clinical safety and effective communication and least confident in learning related to managing safety risks. All the patient safety factors irrespective of the scenario, scored above 75% and thus interpreted as good competence. Statistically significant differences were reported among the genders in the classroom scenario for learning about communicating effectively with the patients regarding patient safety issues (p < 0.05). Male dental students, undergraduates and those in the private institution were significantly less confident about recognizing and reporting to immediate risks in the clinical scenario compared to their respective counterparts (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results, the dental students are quite confident with regard to the learning aspects of clinical patient safety, nevertheless, their confidence in learning certain patient safety aspects warrants further improvement. This implies a need to address the impact of regular interventions, extra motivation and repeated mentoring in both the classroom and clinical scenarios on improving dental students' confidence about patient safety.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence of dental caries among groups of 6-12-year-old children with and without Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, taking into account oral health behaviour, diet, and salivary parameters. METHODS: The study was designed as a comparable study of dental caries experience between T1DM and non-diabetic groups of children. The total sample size of 209 participants consisted of 69 diabetic and 140 non-diabetic children. Oral hygiene, diet and socio-economic status were collected using a pre-tested questionnaire. Caries was recorded in terms of decayed and filled permanent and primary teeth (DFT/dft). Salivary microbial counts and pH levels were recorded using Caries Risk Test (CRT) kit. Student's t-test, the chi-squared test, linear regression and one-way analysis of variance were performed P-value of 0.05 considered significant. RESULTS: The mean dft scores for the diabetic and non-diabetic groups were 3.32 ± 0.78 and 3.28 ± 0.71 (mean ± SD), respectively (p = 0.458). The mean DFT scores for the diabetic and non-diabetic groups were 1.62 ± 0.65 and 1.96 ± 0.65, respectively (p = 0.681). Diabetic children visited dentists more often than non-diabetic children did (p = 0.04), and had lower consumption of both sweets (p = 0.003) and flavoured milk (p = 0.002) than the non-diabetic group. Furthermore, analysis showed that the diabetic children had medium oral pH levels (pH = 4.5-5.5), whereas the non-diabetic children tended to have high (pH ≥ 6.0) oral pH; this difference was statistically significant (p = 0.01). In addition, the diabetic group had higher Lactobacillus levels than the non-diabetic group (p = 0.04). CONCLUSION: The difference in caries prevalence between the diabetic and non-diabetic children was not statistically significant. The CRT analysis revealed a higher frequency of "critical" pH values (pH = 4.5-5.5) and higher Lactobacillus counts in diabetic children than in non-diabetic children, which indicated a higher caries risk in the former group.
