Using gamification in an obligatory course for first-year dental students was associated with an improvement in academic writing skills although students' satisfaction with game aspects was modest and their willingness to use gamification in future courses was minimal.

Exposing students to manage complex oral rehabilitation including procedures like sinus lifting and bone augmentation, through an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach during the undergraduate comprehensive clinical dentistry course enhances their confidence and clinical acumen as an independent practitioner.

Better knowledge is needed about the effectiveness of preparatory English language courses for the health professions. This study evaluated the scientific writing skills of students finishing their preparatory year of a bachelor of dentistry programme in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014-15 among first-year dental students at the University of Dammam. Students were asked to write a 150-word English language assignment that was analysed for writing statistics and problems using Microsoft Word and plagiarism detection software. Of the 89 respondents, female students used a significantly greater number of words than did male students and their assignments had significantly lower Flesch reading ease scores. Male students had significantly lower odds of using references (OR 0.04) and higher odds of making punctuation and grammar mistakes (OR 2.63 and 3.91 respectively). One course of scientific writing in the preparatory year may not be enough to develop adequate writing skills among undergraduate dental students. ‫الكلية‬ ‫دخوهلم‬ ‫وقت‬ ‫السعوديني‬ ‫األسنان‬ ‫طب‬ ‫طالب‬ ‫لدى‬ ‫اإلنجليزية‬ ‫باللغة‬ ‫العلمية‬ ‫الكتابة‬ ‫مهارات‬ ‫تقييم‬

Coordinated efforts and a stepwise approach towards item development, coupled with focused faculty development exercises, is a cost-effective means of developing a huge 'Question Data Bank' of valid and reliable test items which can serve as a National Resource for the Professional Regulatory Councils in the country for their Licensure Examination.

Background: Twitter is a powerful platform which could be used to reflect on the demand and supply of dental services during a pandemic. The aim of this study was to examine the nature and dissemination of COVID-19 information related to dentistry on Twitter platform Arabic database during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: One hundred and fifty independent searches with a combination of keywords for both COVID-19 and dentistry from a preselected Arabic keyword were carried out for the period from the 2nd of March (first confirmed cases of COVID-19) to the 6th of July 2020. Tweets were filtered to remove duplicate and unrelated tweets. The suitable tweets were 1,150. After calibration, two examiners coded the tweets following two main themes: COVID-19 and oral health-related information. Tweets were then compared with COVID-19 daily events in the Arab countries as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using Microsoft Excel.Results: The most retweeted information was the help with urgent consultation or emergency dental treatment during COVID-19 tweeted by a dentist. There were 673 retweets and 1,116 likes of this tweet. The most common tweets related to oral health were needs of dental treatment (n=462, 39.5%) of which, toothaches or wisdom tooth problems constituted 48% of the related tweets. Conclusion:Based on the results of this study, it is obvious that social media users reacted to the COVID-19 threat to dental practices. Twitter as one of the social media platforms served as a connection between dental health professionals and patients.

Background and aimsMonitoring oral diseases is needed to allocate resources, plan health services and train dental workforce. Caries is one of the oral diseases most commonly included in oral health surveillance systems. The present study assessed (1) caries data availability in the administrative regions of Saudi Arabia and (2) factors associated with this availability.MethodsWe collected caries data in the period 2008–2018 in Saudi Arabia (outcome variable). The explanatory variables included region-level factors: (a) socio-economic indicators (percentage of individuals with university education, percentage of category A governorates, percentage of owned houses, households with computers, internet and smart phones) and, (b) oral health research potential indicators (number of Dental Public Health (DPH) specialists, Ministry of Health (MoH) dentist to population ratio and number of dental schools). ArcGIS was used for data visualization and logistic regression was used for analysis.ResultsTwenty-two studies provided caries data for 46.2% of the regions which were inhabited by 84.7% of the population. Region-level data availability was associated with the number of dental schools (OR = 1.63) with 61.5% of the regions correctly classified. More regions were correctly classified when population to MoH dentist ratio (76.9%) and the number of DPH specialists (92.3%) were included.ConclusionsCaries data were available for half of the administrative regions in Saudi Arabia and data availability was associated with higher number of dental schools. The presence of DPH specialist provided the critical mass to collect caries data.

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Aim To compare and evaluate the influence of the COVID-19 outbreak on tweets related to dental treatment needs and advice of Saudi Twitter users in 2020 by comparing them to the same time-period in 2019. Methods Eight independent searches based on dentistry related keywords: “teeth, mouth and gingiva” were carried out within the timeframe between the 23rd of March and the 21st of June for the years 2020 and 2019. Extracted tweets were analyzed by two calibrated examiners as tweets containing expressed dental needs and tweets for dental advice, while spam tweets were excluded. Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using SPSS. Bivariate analysis was performed with Pearson’s Chi Square, Fisher’s Exact test and Mann–Whitney U test. Statistical significance was set at p ≤ 0.05. Results A total of 595 tweets from the year 2019 and 714 tweets from the year 2020 were obtained. Overall, combined dental needs and advice tweets, retweets, likes, and replies were higher in 2020 compared to 2019. Dental needs tweets were higher in 2020 compared to 2019, while dental advice tweets were lower in 2020 compared to 2019. Statistically significant differences were found between 2020 and 2019 with regards to dental needs well as with dental advice (p < 0.05). In addition, statistically significant differences were found between 2019 and 2020 with presence of pain, urgency of the dental need and type of advisor (p < 0.05). Conclusion An obvious impact of the pandemic can be seen in the form of increased self-reported dental needs, pain and urgency among the public in Saudi Arabia. This study highlights the importance of social media, specifically Twitter, in expressing the public needs and utilizing it as a platform for education and advice.