Critical Thinking Disposition and Skills in Dental Students: Development and Relationship to Academic Outcomes.

Critical thinking is a key element of complex problem-solving and professional behavior. An ideal critical thinking measurement instrument would be able to accurately predict which dental students are predisposed to and capable of thinking critically and applying such thinking skills to clinical situations. The aims of this study were to describe critical thinking disposition and skills in dental students at the beginning and end of their first year, examine cohort and gender effects, and compare their critical thinking test scores to their first-year grades.

Competencies for the new postdoctoral Oral Medicine graduate in the United States.

Oral Medicine is primarily a nonsurgical dental discipline that includes management of (1) oral mucosal and salivary gland diseases; (2) temporomandibular disorders and orofacial pain; (3) oral complications of systemic disease; and (4) dental management of medically complex patients within its scope of practice. In the United States, the American Academy of Oral Medicine (AAOM) is the professional organization that primarily supports Oral Medicine education, research, and patient care. This document informs the knowledge, skills, and behaviors of beginning Oral Medicine graduates in the United States in three domains: Diagnosis and primarily nonsurgical management of oral mucosal and salivary gland disorders.

Graduating dental students' views of competency statements: importance, confidence, and time trends from 2008 to 2012.

Competency documents are used in dental education as both an educational framework and an accreditation instrument. The aim of this study was to analyze the perceptions of graduating dental students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) regarding the importance of each competency statement, as well as to assess their confidence in their abilities associated with each statement. The instrument was based on the survey developed by Schönwetter et al.

Faculty and student perceptions of the success of a hybrid-PBL dental curriculum in achieving curriculum reform benchmarks.

The dental education literature identifies eleven benchmark reform agenda curriculum qualities. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the University of British Columbia D.M.