Perceptions and Practices of Dental School Faculty Regarding Evidence‐Based Dentistry

Abstract

Successful integration of critical thinking and evidence-based dentistry (EBD) concepts throughout didactic and clinical dental curricula require faculty support. Critical thinking and EBD deinitions and practice continue to evolve, and not all dental faculty members were exposed to such concepts during their education. The objective of this study was to understand faculty members' perspectives on both critical thinking and EBD. An online survey was designed to assess full-and part-time faculty members' understanding, practice and teaching of critical thinking and EBD, interest in and perceived signiicance of EBD, and perceived barriers to teaching critical thinking and EBD at one U.S. dental school. Forty-three faculty members completed the survey for a 41 percent response rate. Most respondents (46 percent) deined critical thinking as the use of evidence or the scientiic method in decision making and EBD as clinical practice based on "science only" (39 percent) or "quality science only" (34 percent). Based on their individual deinitions, over 75 percent of the respondents reported incorporating critical thinking into didactic and clinical teaching; 79 percent and 47 percent, respectively, reported incorporating EBD into their didactic and clinical teaching. While these faculty members conirmed the importance of teaching students EBD, they identiied barriers to teaching as time, knowledge, and resources. These results, which relect one school's efforts to understand faculty perceptions and practices of EBD, suggest that faculty training and resource support are necessary for successful curricular integration of critical thinking and EBD.

Dental Educators’ Perceptions of Educational Learning Domains

“…Many responses were detailed and descriptive. A variation of a technique previously described to understand faculty members’ perspectives on critical thinking and evidence‐based dentistry 12 was used to categorize responses to the question asking for a definition of critical thinking. Of the 52 responses, 47 (90%) used a verb reflecting thinking or a descriptor reflecting thinking.…”

Elementos contribuintes para a aplicação da Odontologia baseada em evidências: parte I

“…Dentre eles, a falta de conhecimento ou o conhecimento obsoleto de muitos docentes acerca de aspectos da epidemiologia clínica que fundamenta a OBE e a tradição da disseminação da informação na odontologia pautada na opinião de experts. Também chamam a atenção as limitações no uso de banco de dados eletrônicos, o acesso aos artigos que trazem a informação sem intermediários e limitações com a língua inglesa 20,21 .…”

“…De fato, qualquer abordagem guiada que torne o acadêmico o protagonista do processo de busca é bem-vinda. Marshall et al 21 (2013) sugerem que oportunidades de treinamento e de suporte técnico científico a docentes são fundamentais para garantir a incorporação da OBE no currículo dos cursos de Odontologia, uma vez que muitos não tiveram contato com os fundamentos da OBE durante a graduação ou pós-graduação.…”

Dental Education Required for the Changing Health Care Environment

“…A focus on learning to critically think and problem‐solve in any discipline, especially across disciplines and professions, requires a different way of teaching and assessment. New models are currently being reported to address the necessary improvement of conceptual learning for applying critical thinking to clinical decision making vs. content memorization 31 . If the goal is for students to use critical thinking skills, then opportunities must be provided to engage them in PBL, analyze case‐based scenarios, and involve them in debates, role‐plays, argument mapping, thinking aloud, and simulation, among other activities, while also modifying competency assessment strategies 2 .…”