Clinical Requirements, Comprehensive Dental Care and Students' Final Examination Performance

Introduction: Clinical training of undergraduate dental students aims to produce general dental practitioners capable of providing comprehensive dental care for their patients. To do this effectively, the practitioner should not only be capable of making a diagnosis and formulating a treatment plan, but should also be competent to carry out the clinical procedures normally performed in general dental practice. Thus, the driving force in many undergraduate clinical training programs is either numeric clinical requirements or, more recently, comprehensive treatment of assigned patients. Aim: To determine the relationship between dental students' clinical grades at final (exit) examinations and numeric clinical requirements or number of comprehensively treated patients (finished cases). Method: The number of selected clinical procedures (class II restorations, root canals fillings, crowns, and extractions) carried out by 14 dental students in the first graduating batch at the Kuwait University Faculty of Dentistry, were used in this study. General linear model (GLM) Univariate procedure was carried out with SPSS software, using the number of clinical procedures and number of comprehensively treated patients as the independent variables, and the overall marks scored at the final (exit) examinations, the dependent variable. Results: The number of crowns or finished cases was found to have a significant effect on students' scores at the final (exit) examinations (p<0.05). Furthermore, students who had final scores equal or greater than 85% had significantly higher number of crowns (p=0.011) and finished cases (p=0.026), as compared to those with scores < 85%. Conclusion: The number of crowns or finished cases can be used as a good determinant of performance at the final (exit) examinations, and therefore as a driving force in undergraduate dental training.