Making use of the technologically advanced environment, the blended curriculum fostered student-focused learning to develop the didactic and laboratory skills necessary for competency in a pre-clinical setting.

Aims Our previous work demonstrated that women with temporomandibular disorder (TMD) exhibit enhanced temporal summation of pain upon repetitive mechanical stimulation of the fingers, compared to healthy controls, suggestive of widespread up regulated central nociceptive processing in this patient population. The current study asks whether TMD case-control differences in Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM) exist, using a mechanically evoked Temporal Summation (TS) model. Methods A series of 10 repetitive, mildly noxious, mechanical stimuli were applied to the fingers of 30 TMD women and 30 age-matched healthy women. The subjects rated the pain intensity caused by the 1st, 5th and 10th stimulus in the train. To evaluate CPM, the same series of mechanical stimulations were applied with concomitant exposure of the other hand to a painfully cold water bath. Results Pain ratings increased significantly with stimulus repetition (p<0.01) and CPM significantly reduced TS of pain (p<0.01). Of particular note, both groups showed very similar degrees of CPM, with no significant group difference. Conclusion Painful TMD is not necessarily associated with a compromised ability to engage the endogenous analgesic system in an experimental setting.

Little is known about self-directed and self-relective assessment in preclinical dental curricula. The aim of this study was to evaluate a visual dental anatomy teaching tool to train dental students to self-assess their dental anatomy wax carving practical examinations. The students self-assessed two waxing practical examinations (tooth #8 and tooth #19) using high-quality digital images in an assessment tool incorporated into a digital testing program. Student self-assessments were compared to the faculty evaluations and the results of a software-based evaluation tool (E4D Compare). Out of a total 130 irst-year dental students at one U.S. dental school, wax-ups from 57 participants were available for this study. The assessment data were submitted to statistical analyses (p<0.05). For tooth #8, the student self-assessments were signiicantly different from the faculty and software assessments at a 400 micrometer level of tolerance (p=0.036), whereas the faculty assessment was not signiicantly different from the software assessment at a 300 micrometer level of tolerance (p=0.69). The evaluation of tooth #19 resulted in no signiicant differences between faculty members (p=0.94) or students (p=0.21) and the software at a level of tolerance of 400 micrometers. This study indicates that students can learn to self-assess their work using self-relection in conjunction with faculty guidance and that it may be possible to use software-based evaluation tools to assist in faculty calibration and as objective grading tools.