title: French dental students' perception of a period of instruction in a hospital department.
abstract: At the end of the first year of both French medical and dental studies, a four-week rotation in a hospital department has been implemented to introduce preclinical students to hospital life. The aims of this study were to analyze the scope of this training period and to determine dental students' perceptions of how they benefited from this hospital experience. All registered second-year dental students belonging to four successive cohorts were enrolled in the study (n=161). They were asked to complete two questionnaires, one immediately at the end of the course, the second one in the final year of dental studies. The former questionnaire assessed what had been accomplished during the hospital rotation; the latter evaluated the impact of the course on dental studies. Good implementation of hygiene rules (77.7 percent) and washing hands (75.5 percent), communication with patients (67.5 percent), carrying out injections (53.5 percent), and performing easy nursing care (53.2 percent) seemed to be the most useful practices that helped students all through their dental education. The majority of students (70.7 percent) judged the course useful and necessary for dental studies. For 70 percent, however, the hospital rotation was too long, and these students recommended shortening the program. The usefulness of such an experience depends a lot upon the supervision that the student received.
authors.affiliation: UFR Odontologie, 11 boulevard Charles de Gaulle, 63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France. valerie.roger@u-clermont1.fr
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Roger-Leroi
mesh_terms: D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003479:Curriculum; D003812:Dentist-Patient Relations; D004497:Education, Dental / Q000379:methods*; D005602:France; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D015397:Program Evaluation; D013335:Students, Dental / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires