Teaching With Geriatric Simulation in the Sixth Year Dental Students

Objectives: This the first simulation of a geriatric teaching session at the Faculty of Dentistry, Chiang Mai University. Our aim was to raise awareness on the needs of elderly people to the sixth year dental students who are in their last year of study before they head to other topics in the geriatric odontology course and graduate.
Methods:
In this study, 103 students first answered a questionnaire about their family background, experience with geriatric people, and perspective of aging before entering the simulation. Later, they were randomly chosen to participate in different simulation activities, which lasted for 3 hours. The functional impairments of elderly people’s were simulated in terms of these deteriorations; fine motor skill, visual perception, and mobility. Feedback and data after those activities were collected and analyzed.
Results: Less than 15% of students were assigned tasks in taking care of elderly people by their families whereas approximately, 50% of them have been raised up with their grandparents, living with them especially at their early childhood. However, more than 50% have had experience of doing activities with old people. After simulation learning, the majority realized of a decrease in their ability of more than 50% from their routine lives while doing these geriatric simulation activities. Decreasing in visual perception was the most uncomfortable deterioration among those three simulation activities. More than 7 required specific personal characters of dentists who work with aging patients were proposed from this research subjects.
Conclusions: All subjects agreed that this simulation session definitely have provoked them about difficulties of being the old ager. This leaded them into summarizing the most three wanted characteristics of dentists who work with geriatric patients: calmness, consideration, and helpfulness. However, some comments on operating time and other types of impairment such as hearing loss, were also addressed and requested in future workshop.