Does the level of realism of clinical simulators have an influence on empathy in Dentistry students?

Introduction

Learning with phantoms in simulated dental offices allows students to develop not only skills but also empathy by recognizing the simulator as a real patient. This study investigates the level of empathy developed by 4^th-year pediatric Dentistry students in a simulated scenario with two pediatric phantoms and analyzes whether the phantoms' degree of realism influences the established empathy.

Methods

A scenario was presented in a simulated dental office using two hand-made simulators: one involving a humanized mask -ELLA junior- and the other an Erler Zimmer phantom mask without the recreation of facial features. Two students performed the roles of dentist and assistant, and a professional actress was cast in the role of the mother. After the simulation, the Spanish-validated CARE questionnaire was distributed among 225 4^th-year pediatric dental students, adding 4 questions on the level of perceived realism (obtaining 100% answers for empathy and 97.77% for realism). A statistical analysis was then carried out.

Results

The level of empathy for 9 out of 10 questions was “good”. The dentist's positivity was the highest-rated empathy indicator whilst the interest in the patient-phantom remained the lowest. The phantom without humanization obtained a significantly better empathy mean value (36.86 ± 43/31.19 ± 9.72), and no correlation was observed between the generated degree of realism and the empathy level obtained by students.

Conclusion

The level of empathy obtained by 4^th-year dental students in the simulated scenario was good, not finding that the level of empathy improved when using a more realistic-looking phantom.