Objectives To describe the validation of a new 27‐item ageism scale for dental students in Greece. Background A new ageism scale for dental students has been developed by American and European Gerodontology educators and was preliminary validated in the United States. Methods The scale was translated into Greek and administered to 8th‐ and 10th‐semester dental students in Athens. Principal components analysis was used to explore the internal structure of the measure; internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach's α coefficient; corrected item‐total correlations were calculated to decide which low contributing items should be removed from the scale; and discriminant validity was tested investigating variation in relation to demographic and educational factors. Results A total of 152 students responded to the questionnaire. The Principal component analysis offered a 15‐item scale distributed into four factors that accounted for 56.4%, of the total variance, produced stronger factor loadings, a comparable amount of overall component variance and logical sets of components. The four factors produced were values/ethics about older people (four items, α = 0.71), patient compliance (four items, α = 0.72), barriers to dental care (four items, α = 0.57) and dentist‐older patient interaction (three items, α = 0.64). Discriminant validity revealed statistically significant differences in factors and items related to semester of studies, gender and family's permanent residence. Conclusion The preliminary validation of the Greek version of the ageing scale for dental students revealed a 15‐item questionnaire that demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability and could be further tested in larger samples.

Critical thinking skills are essential for the successful dentist, yet few explicit skillsets in critical thinking have been developed and published in peer-reviewed literature. The aims of this article are to 1) offer an assessable critical thinking teaching model with the expert's thought process as the outcome, learning guide, and assessment instrument and 2) offer three critical thinking skillsets following this model: for geriatric risk assessment, technology decision making, and situation analysis/reflections. For the objective component, the student demonstrates delivery of each step in the thought process. For the subjective component, the student is judged to have grasped the principles as applied to the patient or case. This article describes the framework and the results of pilot tests in which students in one year at this school used the model in the three areas, earning scores of 90% or above on the assessments. The model was thus judged to be successful for students to demonstrate critical thinking skillsets in the course settings. Students consistently delivered each step of the thought process and were nearly as consistent in grasping the principles behind each step. As more critical thinking skillsets are implemented, a reinforcing network develops.

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a learning strategy using critical thinking to teach dental students how to assess the risk of rapid oral health deterioration (ROHD) among elderly patients. A learning guide was developed using risk factors identified in the literature and the steps that expert faculty members apply in their clinical decision making, summarized in a set of ten steps. A new system of labeling risk was developed for the elderly population, which correlates the level of risk with the amount of disease. Participants in the study were all 91 fourth-year dental students in two subsequent classes who took part in a five-week Geriatrics and Special Needs Clinic rotation in the spring of 2015 and 2016. The students were introduced to the ROHD concept and asked to use the guide in a presentation during their rotation. The students were graded on an A, G, or M scale (Applied concept, Grasped and applied concept, or Missed application of concept). Students were also asked to assess their learning experience, and their answers were thematically grouped and analyzed. For eight of the ten steps, at least 93% of the students were graded A or G. The exceptions were the steps about developing a communications plan, which was missed by 23.1%, and self-assessment, which was missed by 30.8%. Interexaminer agreement on students' applying (A + G grades) versus missing the step was moderate or high on six of ten items. Nearly all the students (98.7%) considered assessing the risk of ROHD an important or very important skill. In this study, a learning strategy to teach dental students how to assess the risk of ROHD among elderly patients was developed and successfully implemented.

Purpose/aim: Ageism negatively affects health care. This paper presents an extended validation of a novel scale assessing ageism among dental students. Method and materials:A previously pilot-tested 27-question scale applied to a larger sample (n = 315) from two U.S. dental schools with Principal Component Analysis used to assess internal structure of the measure. Questions whose deletion increased the overall loading on >1 factor or those unexpectedly grouped in another factor were thoroughly examined.

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