Effectiveness of Group Learning and Role-Playing on Pre-Clinical Practice for Pediatric Dentistry

Role-playing practice has been used in medical courses to teach appropriate attitudes to patients and to develop examination skills used in medical interviews. The purpose of this paper was to consider the effect of role-playing in small groups in teaching appropriate attitudes to the guardians of pediatric patients by undergraduate students in dental school.<BR>The subjects were 113 fourth-year (pre-clinical training grade) undergraduate students at the Kanagawa Dental College School of Dentistry. The students were divided into 19 groups, with 5-6 students in each group. Then the role-playing in involving tooth brushing instruction (TBI) to the guardians of patients was performed by a 3-student subgroup. Each student played the roles of dentist, guardian and observer in turn, and the students who played the latter two roles and the instructor in each group evaluated the attitude and TBI skills of the student playing role of the dentist in the subgroup using OSCE. After all of the students played the three roles in turn, they made self-assessment of their own attitudes to the guardian and their TBI skills.<BR>The average score of the achievement rate with respect to the SBOs for this practice (OSCE score)from the three different categories of evaluator, i. e. the instructors of each group, the other students as observers, the students, and those who played the role of the dentist (themselves), was evaluated. The average OSCE score from the instructors, the other students, and themselves was 89.0%,90.4%, and 82.8%, respectively. No significant correlation was observed between the OSCE score and the result of their paper examination (rs =the range of 0.1 to 0.2, p>0.1). According to the result of the questionnaire after the role-playing,98% of the students preferred the role-playing practice to the usual practice for teaching clinical skills. Most of them stated that they would like to have other opportunities for role-playing practice using various kinds of clinical situations.<BR>Role-playing is one of the most effective methods for un dergraduate students to teach appropriate attitudes to patients or their guardians and the skills needed for the medical interview prior to clinical training. Moreover, small group learning is also effective in increasing the enthusiasm of the students for clinical subjects in both medical and dental courses by using the role-playing technique.