Digital Dental Patient Study Concept: Improved Approach for High Quality Dental Education Within the Conditions of War or Sanitary Restrictions

Abstract

Objective of study was to present originally-developed approach of digital dental patient study concept and assess student-oriented satisfaction with it, while also evaluate its effectiveness for keeping high-quality dental education level at the conditions of war or sanitary restrictions. Digital dental patient study concept was originally developed for the Department of Restorative Dentistry, adapted to its’ educational needs and primarily included further obligatory components: 1) intraoral scans; 2) various types of X-ray examination results (periapical radiographs, orthopantomograms, CBCT scans); 3) online periodontal charts; 4) adapted charts for the annotation of clinical findings. Survey among students was held in the form of online-questionnaire designed within Google-form. Implementation of digital dental patient study concept helps to compensate to some manner deficiency of clinical practice caused by the war-related limitations, since students satisfaction with the quality of obtained practical skills (including such needed for the clinical practice and such related to the interaction with digital dental technologies) reached 4.48±0.67, and was statistically higher than during online-education mode with no additionally proposed improvements (p < 0.05). Implementation of digital dental patient study concept did not impact students satisfaction with environment safety and comfort (p > 0.05) and students’ satisfaction with the support provided from the teaching staff, attending staff and education managers (p > 0.05), which in general were rated more than “good”. Proposed digital dental patient study concept may serve as an effective solution to keep high quality of dental education within online study mode under circumstances of providing it at the ongoing war conditions or sanitary restrictions. Digitalization of dental education aimed at strengthening clinically-oriented study process, enhancing students awareness with modern digital technologies and deepening understanding of clinical aspects on the simulation models.