The Effect of an Educational Intervention in Dental Traumatology on General Dentists' Knowledge: A Study in the Public Dental Service of Western Norway.

AIM

To assess the effect of a dental traumatology educational intervention on general dentists' knowledge. The study was conducted at Vestland County's Public Dental Service (PDS) in Western Norway.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

All PDS dental clinics of Vestland County (n = 52) were purposively assigned to a control group receiving no intervention (CC, n = 19), a webinar group (IC1, n = 17), and a combined webinar and in-person physical course group (IC2, n = 16). To examine the effect of the intervention, participants received a post-intervention online questionnaire (Q2) with clinical cases. A generalized linear mixed-effects model (GLMM) was used to compare the individual proportion of correct answers in Q2 between the three groups of educational intervention, where the clinic was set as a random effect factor. Additionally, a GLMM with a binary response variable was used to analyze the answers to individual cases. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS

The response rate was 57% (n = 94). The overall proportion of correct answers was 67.7%, 71.0%, and 75.0% for the CC, IC1, and IC2 groups, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in the overall proportion of correct answers between the groups when accounting for the dependency structure caused by clinics. However, for the individual cases, the IC2 group had a statistically significantly higher proportion of correct answers in complicated crown fracture of the immature tooth (p = 0.02) and first aid after avulsion (p = 0.02) compared to the CC group. Furthermore, the IC2 group had a trend of difference in complicated crown fracture of the mature tooth (p = 0.09) compared to the CC group and in emergency treatment of root fracture (p = 0.08) compared with IC1.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrates that an educational intervention combining webinars with in-person interactive courses has a positive effect on general dentists' knowledge of dental trauma.