IMPROVEMENT OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY STUDENTS

Interpersonal and communication skills in health sciences have a significant impact on patient care. However few tools have been developed to facilitate the instruction of these skills, or evaluate their results. The child dental care requires good communication skills. Grade Students in Dentistry must learn how to communicate successfully with children and their caregivers. Throughout the course of the training program the students routinely simulate procedures and practice skills before actually performing them on patients. A set of essential skills that are not routinely simulated is the child behavior management. Students hear about techniques of child behavior management at conferences, read about them in textbooks, and are then expected to achieve competence in the use of these skills in a clinical setting without prior "practice" via simulation. Preclinical practices based on the use of mannequins or resin teeth are not suitable for simulating the behavior of a child in the dental office. The use of simulated patients (children) is complex. An alternative is to simulate the child patient using computer technology. With the help of computer technology we designed an educational tool, which allows the student interaction based on a child's behavior in different clinical situations. Through successive pages, the student receives information related to a clinical situation. Through links, should be selecting from any of the proposed options. Although there is only one correct option, which allows advancing along the page, selecting any of the incorrect options, will also provide information related to the expected response. An expert panel, consisting of experienced teachers on the subject and teachers of recent addition, based on their own clinical experience in children's dental care, has developed the training content. It seems important to us that students find answers to each of the decisions they make. Thus he will know the potential consequences of their actions, reinforcing the message conveyed. Its implementation in a group of undergraduate students in Dentistry, which has already received traditional content about child behavior management in the dental office, against another who just received these, would assess its effectiveness in facilitating their understanding and assimilation.