Ali Nankali,
Programme Lead, Barts and London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Title: The impact of CPD hands-on courses on practitioners’ skills, Cavity preparation
Biography
Biography: Ali Nankali,
Abstract
Aim: Cavity preparation is one of a daily dental practitioners’ involvements, hence clinicians should be confident for their preparations and achieve an appropriate designed cavity for planed restorations. This research was done to assess the strength of cavity preparations and avoid iatrogenic damages.
Methods: In 2015, six full-day “lectures – hands on” CPD courses delivered by eWisdom (London Deanery) at Barts and Dental Institute at Queen Mary University were dedicated for this study. 206 cavity preparations were observed and analysed to work out the most common existing issues and was tried to find appropriate solutions. About 12 practitioners attended each course with a minimum two cavity preparations by each individual, which was analysed and discussed accordingly. The main problem was detected on opening the contact area for the posterior teeth both for direct and indirect visions. Another main noticed issue were the differences in preparation accuracy between buccal and lingual/palatal side related to the sizes and axial wall angles. In this study number of factors such as: postures, visions and burs were determined to observe the deviations in achieved outcomes.
Results: The study demonstrated the impact of the “lectures – Hands on” CPD courses on outcomes. In addition, it illustrated that practitioners, who have difficulties in cavity preparations, can be divided in three groups: one group are those who not aware about their weaknesses, the second group they know about the issues yet they know the reason, and the third group they aware of the issues and they just need some appropriate more practice preferably under supervision. More interestingly, it was experiential that after finding the reasons of making mistakes, most of practitioners adjusted their work dramatically which approved the impact of this type of course.
Conclusion: Dental laboratories are one of the best places to help practitioners their weakness to improve, furthermore it will help educational systems to understand the clinicians needed.