Premium
Consolidating human disease learning in the Dental Emergency Clinic
Author(s) -
Atkin Philip Alan,
Simms Melanie Louise,
Ravindran Nishma
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
european journal of dental education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.583
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1600-0579
pISSN - 1396-5883
DOI - 10.1111/eje.12829
Subject(s) - medicine , medical history , context (archaeology) , demographics , family medicine , population , disease , emergency department , dental clinic , medical emergency , psychiatry , surgery , sociology , biology , paleontology , demography , environmental health
Dental undergraduates typically learn and are assessed on aspects of human disease (HD) in the early part of their programme, but it is not until later in the programme that their HD knowledge is put into practice when they provide courses of treatment for numerous patients over multiple visits. The teaching of HD provides core knowledge on medical conditions and medications and is therefore essential in allowing newly graduated dentists to provide safe treatment for medically compromised patients or those taking medications. We wanted to examine the medical complexity of patients attending a university hospital dental emergency clinic to determine whether this was a suitable group that would help students to consolidate their HD learning in the context of a single visit where treatment was also provided. Materials and Methods We examined the medical history of 200 patients attending the dental emergency clinic in the University Dental Hospital, Cardiff, using a previous study as a benchmark. Anonymous data were collected using the medical history proforma, and included age, gender, medications, types and number of medical conditions/disorders. Results Patients attending the clinic were more medically complex than those in the comparator study and the demographics reflect wider population data showing increasing numbers of older patients with greater medical morbidity. Discussion/Conclusions The emergency dental clinic is the place where most patients are new to the hospital, have a dental history, medical history, investigations, diagnosis and treatment in a single visit, and offers excellent opportunities for consolidating HD learning in a one‐stop clinical treatment episode, guided by suitable instructors.