Carious typodont teeth's effectiveness in pre-doctoral SIM lab to reinforce operative learning

IntroductionThe concept of ideal preparations in dental schools are highly emphasized during the first two years of students' learning. However, students do not have as much opportunity to practice skills that would prepare them for real-life stituations such as non-ideal preparations and caries removal.ObjectiveThis study aimed to determine the benefits of utilizing carious typodont teeth in the Operative curriculum for first- and second-year UCSF dental studentsMethodsThis study was completed by hosting a workshop in which the students performed a Class II preparation on #19 carious typodont tooth. The students filled out pre- and post-surveys with questions about their confidence with performing a preparation and their opinions on the current curriculum.ResultsThe pre-survey responses showed that the majority of the first- and second-year students did not believe that the traditional non-carious typodont teeth were a good representation of prepping on real, carious teeth. The pre-survey responses also showed that most of the first- and second-year students thought that the addition of carious typodont teeth would improve their learning experience. The post-survey results displayed that the majority of the students thought that prepping carious typodont teeth helped to better reinforce concepts such as preparation design, taught them the difference between ideal and non-ideal preparations, and allowed them to better understand tooth anatomy with the addition of the dentin layer.ConclusionThe use of the carious typodont teeth in pre-clinical operative lab was found to be beneficial to first- and second-year UCSF student's learning based on the pre- and post-survey results.