ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Accurate assessment of dental students' pre-clinical work is the most critical component of the dental education process. Thus, this study came to investigate the effectiveness of using technology in students' pre-clinical work evaluation; by comparing grades generated from a digital assessment software of a prepared tooth and a traditional visual inspection carried out by four calibrated faculty members. METHODS: Ninety-six teeth were prepared for a ceramo-metal crown by fourth year dental students. The four examiners and the digital grading software evaluated independently each preparation once. A random sample of 20 preparations were graded twice to assess intra-rater reliability. Inter-class correlation (ICC) was used to measure agreement among the four examiners, and between the examiners and the digital grading software. Paired student t-test was used to assess the accuracy of grades generated from visual inspection when compared to the digital grading system. RESULTS: Intra-rater reliability for examiners 1 and 2 were 0.73 and 0.78 and for the digital grading system was 0.99. The inter-rater reliability among the four examiners was very good, ICC of 0.76. However, the agreement between scores produced by the examiners and the digital system were mostly in the low to moderate range. The paired t-test demonstrated statistically significant differences between each examiner and the digital grading by 6-25 grades. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the digital grading system used in this study can reliably scan and compare students' tooth preparations to a known gold standard. Results of this study suggests that using digital grading will preclude the variability and the subjectivity that usually result from the traditional visual inspection grading.
Subject(s)
Crowns , Education, Dental/methods , Educational Measurement , Software , HumansABSTRACT
When traditional ranking and rating surveys are used to assess dentists' treatment decisions, the patient's source of payment appears to be of little importance. Therefore, this study used the marketing research tool conjoint analysis to investigate the relative impact of source of payment along with the child's age and cooperativeness on pediatric dentists' willingness to use Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) to restore posterior primary teeth. A conjoint survey was completed by 707 pediatric dentists. Three factors (age of the child, cooperativeness, type of insurance) were varied across 3 levels to create 9 patient scenarios. The relative weights that dentists placed on these factors in the restorative treatment decision process were determined by conjoint analysis. "Cooperativeness" (52%) was the most important factor, "age of the child" (26%) the second-most important factor, followed by "insurance status of the child" (22%). For the third factor, insurance, pediatric dentists were least willing to use ART with publicly insured children (-0.082), and this was significantly different from their willingness to use ART with uninsured children (0.010) but not significantly different than their willingness to use ART for children with private insurance (0.073). Unlike traditional ranking and rating tools, conjoint analysis found that the insurance status of the patient appeared to be an important factor in dentists' decisions about different restorative treatment options. When pediatric dentists were forced to make tradeoffs among different patients' factors, they were most willing to use ART technique with young, uncooperative patients when they had no insurance. Knowledge Transfer Statement: The present study suggests the feasibility of using techniques borrowed from marketing research, such as conjoint analysis, to understand dentists' restorative treatment decisions. Results of this study demonstrate pediatric dentists' willingness to use a particular restorative treatment option (Atraumatic Restorative Treatment in this application) when forced to make tradeoffs in a "conjoined," or holistic, context among different factors presented in real-life patient scenarios. A deeper understanding of dentists' treatment decisions is vital to develop valid practice guidelines and interventions that encourage the use of appropriate restorative treatment modalities.
