Effect of the Preclinical Small-Class Mode of Oral Medicine Teaching

Abstract

Objective: To explore the role of preclinical small-class teaching mode in cultivating the medical students' abilities of clinical thinking, analysis and operating, and summarized the teaching experience. Methods: Fifty undergraduates students of 2011-2012 from Lanzhou University School of Stomatology were divided into two groups randomly (experimental group and control group, n = 25). Students in the experimental group will be arranged with small class every morning during the internship period while the control group not. The clinical teaching involves some normal operation of the oral medicine such as pit and fissure sealant, various hole filling, direct or indirect pulp capping, RCT (pulp exposing and seam exposing roof, root canal length measuring, root canal cleaning, root canal disinfectant, root canal filling), scaling and statistics after the internship period. Results: Most students hold a supportive attitude toward this teaching mode. They have a good impression on mainly 4 aspects of this teaching mode. 78.83% of the students prefer the small class form, 88.40% of the students prefer preparing before class, 84.40% of the students prefer the teaching content, 99.70% of the students prefer the teaching attitude. This result reveals that this teaching mode is recognized by the majority. 39.58% of the students think it has an ideal effect on operation ability, 49.57% of the students think it has an ideal effect on communication skill, 21.69% of the students think it has an ideal effect to link with theoretical knowledge and 48.40% of the students think it has an ideal effect on clinical practice. The total number of cases completed by the control group/ experimental group were fissure sealant (150/200), direct or indirect pulp capping (55/62), scaling and root planning (187/200), RCT (96/208), respectively. The mean time of muster by the control group / experimental group were fissure sealant (3/2) weeks, direct or indirect pulp capping (5/3) weeks, scaling and root planning (9/5) weeks, RCT (10/6) weeks, respectively. Conclusion: The preclinical small-class teaching mode contributes to master the clinical skills, and then improve the effect of practice. It is one of the ways to improve the clinical skill level in the early clinical practice of medical students.