Page 129 - Demo

General discussion1277For a sustainable solution, and to ensure sound decision making, it might be useful to reflect on the decision-making process in the undergraduate clinic, and to adjust the education if indicated. Integration of the education in Endodontology with the education in Implantology regarding decision making might be helpful. When root canal treatment is chosen and started, there remains a chance that the treatment will not be completed (Krishnan et al. 2019). The decision for extraction midway the treatment may be triggered by an interappointment emergency (chapter 6), and therefore, among other reasons, it would be beneficial when the risk for interappointment emergencies during the root canal treatment is reduced. To that end, it might help to reduce the number of appointments and the amount of time between appointments of the root canal treatment whenever possible (chapter 6). The reason for patients to neither return for completion of the root canal treatment nor for extraction of the tooth in which the root canal treatment was started, remains unsure (chapter 6). It is not only inconvenient for the student if their patient does not return for completion of the root canal treatment, but also incomplete treatment of endodontic pathology is risky for the patient, and therefore the reasons to have the root canal treatment not completed should be studied further (Krishnan et al. 2019). As part of the measures taken to increase the amount of experience students will get in performing root canal treatments in patients before they graduate from ACTA, it has been decided that students are allowed to perform root canal treatments in the general dental practice where they perform their final year’s internship. Even though our work reveals that part of the process of building self-efficacy may take place outside the dental school, this approach cannot be validated based on our work. Participants in our study were graduates and they generally had more clinical experience in Endodontics in an undergraduate clinic before they started to perform root canal treatments outside the dental school (chapter 4). To keep track of what the students learn from performing root canal treatments in the general dental practices, we would advise to integrate the students’ experience in Endodontics during their internships with in-school peer discussion about lessons learned, under the supervision of endodontists. In addition, the value – along with possible risks – of this approach to acquire clinical experience in Endodontics outside the dental school should be studied. As an alternative measure to deal with the challenges of limited numbers of – for students suitable – endodontic patients, students can be trained in dyads (chapter 4); peers train their clinical skills in pairs. They think together, discuss Annemarie Baaij.indd 127 28-06-2023 12:26