A Model of Dental Public Health Teaching at the Undergraduate Level in Peru

Abstract

There has been a growing interest among dental educators regarding the opportunities offered by community-based dental education as a means to allow dental students to assume their role as health professionals in the real world. Although several dental schools have integrated community-based education into their curricula, most have not engaged their students in the development of competencies to address dental health needs at the community level. The purpose of this article is to discuss the teaching-learning experiences in dental public health at the undergraduate level in the Faculty of Stomatology at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (FS-UPCH) in Lima, Peru. The teaching-learning activities in dental public health at the FS-UPCH consist of two well-defined stages: experiences in low-income urban communities and experiences in low-income rural communities. Both stages have been designed to make it possible for students to acquire competency in addressing oral health needs at the community level as well as to enlarge and deepen their knowledge about the social and health situation in Peru. In community-based dental education, students are not only placed in community settings to treat individual patients, but also challenged to consider dental public health issues, including the administrative aspects of dental services.

Dental education in Peru

“…Each student is assigned to a community. Full-time dedication provides a more intense and sustained experience than that in the first stage spent in low-income urban communities (6). In these rural and remote areas with few roads, there are minimal supplies of electricity and running water, and only simple radio communication.…”

University-based initiatives towards better access to oral health care for rural and remote populations: A scoping review

“…Outcomes of this scoping review revealed that students benefitted from these university initiatives by having opportunities to work in real-world situations that inspired them to learn [46], practice various procedures, manage the diversity of patients and gain experience working in a team [26]. Indicators for the success of these programs were: students’ satisfaction with the program, community-based experience, enhanced communication skills and self-confidence; a high rate of treated patients; reduced oral health problems in rural areas after rural placements; and an increased percentage of students working in rural dental practices [1, 3, 11, 24–27, 29, 31, 33–43, 47, 49–52, 54–65, 67, 68, 70–72, 74, 78, 84, 86]. The effectiveness of rural exposure through training in universities and institutions was found to vary due to reasons such as the short duration of rural placement programs, as well as a lack of standardized methodologic and evaluation tools [94].…”

“…Additionally, quantitative measurements, such as cost per patient, marginal cost and cost analysis [32, 41, 42, 79, 91, 92] were used to measure the cost-effectiveness of various programs. For qualitative measurement, tools, such as data documentation [63], interviews [28, 47, 50, 63, 80] and mixed approaches, questionnaires in combination with focus group discussions, interviews and open-ended questionnaires [34, 38, 48, 59, 67, 71, 72] were used to measure the outcomes.…”

“…These included students’ competencies and experience [1, 3, 11, 25–27, 31, 34, 38–43, 47, 50–52, 60, 64, 65, 67], supervising dentists’ and students’ satisfaction [35, 38, 84], staff and supervisors’ attitude, experience, and feasibility [3, 28, 34, 43, 46, 64, 85], client/patient and caregivers’ attitude [34], attitudes of health workers [59] and student evaluations by supervising dentists [37]. Also, several impacts were observed, such as effects on students’ education, research and oral health services [44], impact on rural recruitment and graduate retention [24, 29, 33, 36, 49, 54] and on minority and rural student enrollment [55–58].…”

“…Accordingly, most of the training and education programs were shown to be feasible through feedback from staff, academic personnel, and trainees. For example, these programs were reported to have helped improve students’ and trainees’ clinical competencies and social sensitization, and provided them with positive experiences and satisfaction [1, 3, 11, 25–27, 31, 34, 35, 37–43, 47, 50–52, 59, 60, 64, 65, 67, 84]. Staff and supervisors noted positive attitudes and experiences, as well as satisfaction with and feasibility of these programs [3, 28, 34, 35, 38, 43, 46, 64, 84, 85].…”