title: A dental radiologic health laboratory teaching method.
abstract: The School of Dental Medicine at Tufts University has given new direction to the understanding of radiologic health through a program in which all students participate in some laboratory activities directly related to the problems of radiologic health in dental practice. This article presents an explanation of the background of this program and the experiments performed and discusses the interest in the program and its effect on the dental students. The laboratory program described is held for 3 1/2 hours on Wednesday afternoons at the Dental School, since this is a period of minimum patient load in the Radiology Department. The course is presented for third-year dental students who already have takin a lecture course in the fundamentals and techniques of radiology and have received training in the proper procedures for taking radiographs. The program is designed as a series of experiments dealing with machine output, filtration, collimation, exposure factors, scatter radiation, film density, patient protection, and shielding. The students are introduced to various radiation-detection instruments and given the opportunity to use these instruments to measure output and scatter-radiation levels under varying conditions. The laboratory teaching method presented can also be reprogrammed for different group sizes and time schedules.
mesh_terms: D001900:Boston; D003479:Curriculum; D004497:Education, Dental; D011861:Radiography, Dental; D011871:Radiology / Q000193:education*; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods