Page 43 - Demo

Teaching in Endodontics assessed via self-efficacy413training module, there are no minimum requirements regarding the number of root canal treatments performed on a patient before graduation. The students may graduate when they are considered well prepared for the task of a general dental practitioner. The preparedness for this task is assessed with the use of a formative assessment. The supervision component of the clinical training module has been revised as well. Currently, the students are supervised by general dental practitioners or by endodontists. The number of tutorials in the revised theoretical training module has been increased. One extensive tutorial in the former module is replaced with trimesterlong weekly tutorials guided by an endodontist. During those tutorials, various clinical cases, including the diagnoses, aetiology, prognoses, treatments and ontopic current endodontic literature, are discussed. As a result of the implementation of the curricular changes, an intermediate cohort comprising students following the whole or a part of the former undergraduate endodontic programme and students following the whole or a part of the revised undergraduate endodontic programme had been formed. The students of this intermediate cohort, who differed in the combinations of modules and components they attended, were asked to volunteer in the present study in their final months prior to graduation. They were informed that the purpose of the present study was to evaluate the influence of teaching methods on their experience in endodontics, and that since their answers would be completely blinded, the researchers would be unable to link the data obtained to a specific student. Only after giving permission to use their data were students able to participate. Participation comprised filling out an online questionnaire that was composed for the present study. Self-efficacy was assessed using the Dutch Adaptation of the General SelfEfficacy Scale (Bart Teeuw, Ralf Schwarzer & Matthias Jerusalem, Berlin, Germany, 1994), whose questions were adapted to endodontics. This adapted scale was named the ‘Endodontic General Self-Efficacy Scale’.Self-perceived competence was assessed using a self-composed questionnaire, the English translation of which is shown in Table 1. To be consistent, for this ‘Endodontic Self-Perceived Competence Scale’, like the Endodontic General SelfEfficacy Scale, a four-point Likert-type format was used. Self-perceived competence was defined as the sum of the answers to questions 1 to 10.Questionnaires are most effective if the separate questions of different questionnaires are mixed to form one combined questionnaire. The two Annemarie Baaij.indd 41 28-06-2023 12:26