A National Survey of U.S. Dental Students’ Experiences with International Service Trips

Abstract

Globalization, along with the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases, their risk factors, and poor oral health, demands global approaches to oral health care. Trained health care workers' providing volunteer services abroad is one model used for improving access to dental services for some communities. Currently, little is known about U.S. dental student involvement in international clinical service volunteerism. The aim of this exploratory study was to capture national survey data from predoctoral dental students about their interest in and experience with global health service trips. The survey sought to assess students' past experiences and current and future interest in programs providing dental and/or medical services in order to lay the foundation for further research. A 12-question web-based survey was distributed in May 2017 to 22,930 students enrolled in U.S. dental schools. A total of 1,555 students responded, for a response rate of 7%. Respondents were evenly distributed across the four academic years. Approximately 22% (n=342) of the respondents had already participated in a service trip experience, 83% reported interest in a service trip while in school, and 92% were interested after graduation. Reported motivations for international trips included the desire to care for the underserved and to obtain a more global view of health and disease. Concerns were expressed regarding costs and time constraints. This study provided preliminary, exploratory data on dental student engagement with international service trips. Both interest and participation in international service trips among responding students were high, reflecting current trends in both dentistry and medicine. Dental education may have an opportunity to guide student engagement in more sustainable and ethical volunteering in the U.S. and abroad.

Stimulating Intrinsic Motivation in Millennial Students: A New Generation, a New Approach

“…It should also be noted that though the vast majority of literature related to burnouts in health care students is derived from studies in the field of medicine, similar stressful behaviors have also been reported in dental (Lambert et al, 2018;Pape et al, 2018), pharmacy (Nuffer et al, 2017;Lysak et al, 2018;Tetenbaum-Novatt et al, 2018), and nursing students (Sun et al, 2016;Beanlands et al, 2019;Valero-Chillerón et al, 2019). The common reasons for burnouts in these students also include an academic overload (Pape et al, 2018;Queen and Hess, 2018;Dames, 2019), unfamiliar working situations (Hennessy et al, 2016;Bing-You et al, 2018;Budu et al, 2019), and fear of making mistakes with patients (Bronson, 2016;Worly et al, 2018;Riley et al, 2019).…”

“…Other student cohorts have also reported that retrieval practices were especially helpful in tests that required the integration of both short-answer and context-rich multiple-choice questions (Bradley et al, 2012;Rosenkranz et al, 2015;Augustyniak et al, 2016;Baig and Mallu, 2017). It has also been observed that repeated retrieval testing of medical and nursing procedures enhanced motor skill retention over long periods of time in these students (Lambert et al, 2018;Chuenjitwongsa et al, 2018a).…”

“…This model allows for the creation of a variety of flexible learning options (Karpicke and Bauernschmidt, 2011;Baig and Mallu, 2017) in which students can choose when, where, and how they want to be taught (Zielezinski and Karlowski, 2015;Amini et al, 2018). It also offers students an opportunity to gain exposure to the topic prior to the teaching (Kusurkar et al, 2013;Lambert et al, 2018), thereby providing an incentive (Tetenbaum-Novatt et al, 2018), and a sense of responsibility (Cook and Artino, 2016) to come prepared for class (Zielezinski and Karlowski, 2015;Streilein et al, 2018). The accountability of this process can be further encouraged by asking students to document their own progress (Kron et al, 2017) and participate meaningfully in blogs (Tomassini et al, 2016;Brass et al, 2017).…”

“…Investing in a positive, empathic culture will lead to the development of a positive mind-set (Streilein et al, 2018) and enable students to prepare for professional success (Garden, 2013;Mor et al, 2018). In addition, empathic behavior can also deter the loss of the natural enthusiasm for learning and discovery in present-day students (Rosenkranz et al, 2015;Hickman et al, 2018;Lambert et al, 2018), and most importantly prevent the development of burnouts (Ishak et al, 2013;Daya and Hearn, 2018).…”

“…Providing mentorship and feedback are considered fruitful approaches to stimulating IM in present-day health care students (Rosenman et al, 2015;Min, 2018). However, being a challenging responsibility (Jacobs et al, 2015), educators frequently require directions (Coyne et al, 2018;Lambert et al, 2018), primarily due to apprehensions of appearing offensive to students (Cook and Artino, 2016;Brown et al, 2016). Moreover, educators also recognize that it may impact their relationship with students if either of these processes is handled incorrectly, as they could be perceived as being judgmental (Raab, 2014), rather than informative (Duffy, 2001;Agius et al, 2018).…”