A Study of Force Acceleration for Dental Practice on Trainee Dentists and Instructive Dentists

Abstract

 Abstract Clinical practical training in the clinic is considered to be one of the most important educational programs for dental education. However, the period of clinical practical training at each university is regulated by its own curriculum, so it is necessary to improve learning strategies for clinical practice. Our research team has focused on this theme and our previous reports revealed that learning how to control the force acceleration during various procedures (dental force control) might be effective for improving or developing practical dental skills. Sixty-three trainee dentists and 15 dentists with over 10 years of experience working at Niigata University Hospital participated in this study and their dental force when performing five kinds of dental procedure was measured. Periodontal pocket examination (PPE), gingival retraction (GR), tooth extraction (EXT), full metal crown mounting (FMC) and impression for complete dentures (FD) were employed as frequent dental procedures. Dental force measurements were performed twice for 25 and 38 trainee dentists in April as the early stage (TD-E) and in February as the late stage (TD-L), respectively. The measured dental force was significantly different between TD-E and dentists (D) on TE, TDs and D on FMC. It is suggested that there may be an appropriate force to be applied for each dental procedure and that clinical experience might affect the dental force control. It is also suggested that demonstrating an appropriate force for each procedure might improve the learning of clinical practice. Further investigation will elucidate an appropriate dental force for each dental procedure and the amount of clinical experience or target force values required to acquire dental force control.