Dental students' reflective habits: is there a relation with their academic achievements?

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Those students who achieved high OSCE marks, for example, did not have high scores for 'reflection' or 'critical reflection'.

Main

Tricio J, Woolford M et al. Eur J Dent Educ 2015;19: 113–121

The importance of reflection is stressed in the document Preparing for practice (www.gdc-uk.org). But does reflective practice result in more effective patient care? These investigators do not address this question, but look for associations between reflection and other learning characteristics. Of those undergraduate and postgraduate students invited, one third completed an online questionnaire (324 responders). This assessed two levels of non-reflection action (habitual action and understanding) and two levels of reflective action (reflection and critical reflection). Associations were sought with their academic performance. 'Reflection and critical reflection mean scores were higher as students climbed courses.' Only 24 undergraduate students submitted a free text comment. One stated their practice of infection control in the dental surgery influenced their domestic cleaning: 'When I clean the house I do low risk areas first then move onto high risk – weird!'