!Self-Perceived Preparedness to Work Independently Among Graduating Dental Students in Saudi Arabia: Traditional Versus Integrated Curriculum

Objective: To investigate the perceived preparedness of graduating dental students to work independently and to compare these perceptions between Traditional and Integrated curriculums of dentistry in Saudi Arabia. Material and Methods: A pretested self-administered questionnaire was filled by 258 dental students from four dental institutions across the country. The questionnaire covered 10 domains consisting of sixty suitable questions. Students were asked to mark their responses at one of five levels of performance for each of the selected skills ranging from 0 (not yet learned) to 4 (can do it confidently). Mean scores for each subscale of the Questionnaire were calculated by individual items and for all comparison, p=0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: 253 graduating students were included in the final analysis, out of which 108 belongs to the Integrated curriculum group and 145 from Traditional curriculum. Overall scores of Traditional curriculum students (176 +/- 4.8) were more compared to Integrated curriculum students (161 +/- 3.2), which are statistically significant. Integrated curriculum students had more self-perceived skill scores in Orthodontics, Conservative/Operative Dentistry & Endodontics, Dental Public Health and Drug & Emergency management group of clinical skills. Overall, perceived preparedness to practice dentistry for all participants is 60.5% and traditional curriculum students expressed more preparedness (68%) than Integrated curriculum (53%). Conclusion: Overall, preparedness to practice independently is unsatisfactory compared to other countries. The Ministry of Education (KSA) should take necessary actions to bridge the gap between training dentists and to be competent practitioners.