key: cord-0012116-cenwvqo4
authors: Ribeiro, Ana Paula Dias; Johnson, Margeaux; Childs, Gail; Pereira, Patricia Nobrega Rodrigues
title: Options for moving dental clinical education to a virtual learning experience
date: 2020-07-30
journal: J Dent Educ
DOI: 10.1002/jdd.12334
sha: f3e1f73878bce600352819c15985421e77e46834
doc_id: 12116
cord_uid: cenwvqo4

nan

On March 16, 2020, all the clinical activities at the University of Florida College of Dentistry were suspended due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The thirdand fourth-year dental students work in TEAMS clinics (Treatment Planning, Operative Dentistry, Periodontics, and Prosthodontics) with the support from other specialties. Our clinical education was challenged to continue its operation online through case-based seminars, virtual clinical activities, and assessments after 10 days of the shutdown.

The Office of Academic Affairs shared suggestions for virtual clinical activities (adapted from Janet Corral 1 ) that included: e. Faculty assign a clinically relevant clinical or review article and engages students to think critically through discussion or written reflection.

After every clinical activity, the students completed an assignment in the format of quiz identifying the "take home message" or "lessons learned" in 250 words, a critical appraisal of the article, a reflection on the dental management considerations by providing a list of medications and how this will interact with dental treatment, a discussion of the possible accommodations for treatment plan of that specific patient, creation of questions that will allow interaction of basic and clinical sciences, or similar assessments. All the clinical courses had a Canvas course site, which allowed virtual assessments to be made and graded online. Activities rotated among clinical courses from various disciplines and were mandatory.

The implementation of daily clinical activities allowed each discipline to continue clinical education. The rotation for each discipline allowed enough time for preparation and grading by faculty and getting student feedback. Even though it was mandatory, the students' participation was very positive, with many questions during the sessions demonstrating their engagement. These activities allowed the clinical courses to administer clinical grades and reward the students with 100 relative value units (RVUs) for the completion of the assignment. Online clinical activities showed both students and faculty that there is still much to be learned in the junior and senior years. Faculty lessons included the need for integration among the clinical disciplines, the need to update and teach different techniques to reach the same end goal, and the importance of this type of continued education to sustain learning as part of the DMD clinical years. The varied assessment methods reinforced student critical thinking and reflective clinical judgment essential to safe and effective patient treatment. 2 

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