Social Media in the Dental School Environment, Part B: Curricular Considerations.

The goal of this article is to describe the broad curricular constructs surrounding teaching and learning about social media in dental education. This analysis takes into account timing, development, and assessment of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors needed to effectively use social media tools as a contemporary dentist. Three developmental stages in a student's path to becoming a competent professional are described: from undergraduate to dental student, from the classroom and preclinical simulation laboratory to the clinical setting, and from dental student to licensed practitioner.

Social Media in the Dental School Environment, Part A: Benefits, Challenges, and Recommendations for Use.

Social media consist of powerful tools that impact not only communication but relationships among people, thus posing an inherent challenge to the traditional standards of who we are as dental educators and what we can expect of each other. This article examines how the world of social media has changed dental education. Its goal is to outline the complex issues that social media use presents for academic dental institutions and to examine these issues from personal, professional, and legal perspectives.

Teaching culturally sensitive care to dental students: a multidisciplinary approach.

Dental schools must prepare future dentists to deliver culturally sensitive care to diverse patient populations, but there is little agreement on how best to teach these skills to students. This article examines this question by exploring the historical and theoretical foundations of this area of education in dentistry, analyzes what is needed for students to learn to provide culturally sensitive care in a dental setting, and identifies the discipline-specific skills students must master to develop this competence. The problems associated with single-discipline, lecture-based approaches to teaching culturally sensitive care are outlined, and the advantages of an interdisciplinary, patient-centered, skills-based approach to teaching culturally sensitive care are described.

Ethical obliqations and the dental office team.

A hypothetical case of alleged sexual misconduct in a practice with high employee turnover and stress is analyzed by three experts. This case commentary examines the ethical role expectations of an office manager who is not directly involved but becomes aware of the activities. The commentators bring the perspectives of a dental hygienist, academic administrator, and attorney; a teacher of behavioral sciences in a dental school; and a general dentist with many years of practice experience.

Maximizing beneficence and autonomy. Ethical support for the use of nonpharmacological methods for managing dental anxiety.

This article examines advantages associated with nonpharmacological behavioral management techniques and suggests that there are benefits to their use (such as achieving a more lasting solution to the problem of dental anxiety) that are not realized with medication-based interventions. Analyses that use Kantian and existential viewpoints for exploring the use of medication versus behavioral interventions for managing life problems yield parallel conclusions: there are advantages gained by using behavioral interventions that are not always associated with medication-based interventions. These analyses, taken together with an understanding of the psychology of dental anxiety management, suggest that using nonpharmacological techniques for the management of dental anxiety can maximize adherence to the ethical principles of beneficence and patient autonomy.

Relations between children's attachments to their mothers and to security blankets.

Are attachments to security objects and mothers related? Do children securely and insecurely attached to mothers use security blankets differently? Following the Strange Situation procedure (M. D. S.