Evaluation of mix of patients referring to the Pediatric Department of Isfahan Dental School during 2010-2012 in terms of the student's requirements

Considering the importance of patient mix for an optimal clinical learning process, the aim of this study was to assess the oral care needs of patients referring to the Pediatric Department of Isfahan Dental School and to compare it with the curriculum in order to assess the efficacy of clinical education.
In this cross-sectional analytical study, all the available files in the archives of Pediatric Department were gathered. The information about oral health needs of children referring to this department were elicited and compared with the math product of the number of students in each semester and their educational requirements in practical courses 1‒3. Data were analyzed with SPSS 18. To assess the patient mix, the mean of oral health needs of children in each semester/year was calculated and paired t-test was used to compare the treatment/ preventive needs of children with the care provided for them (α = 0.05).
In clinical courses 1 and 2 most of the provided care was lower than the proposed requirement. In clinical course 3, except for extraction and restoration with preventive resin restoration (PRP), the other dental treatments did not conform to the educational requirement. In relation to the preventive and restorative care in all the clinical courses, it seems the number of cases requiring such care was sufficient for meeting the educational requirement of students but the provided care was less than the proposed requirement. In each child, almost half or one-third of his/her dental needs had been satisfied, which was significantly far from his/her real needs (α = 0.05, p value In most clinical pediatric courses, the number of patients was not sufficient to meet the proposed requirement of students. Therefore, offering off-campus programs might effectively increase the number of patients and the types of dental problems that students would contact with during their clinical courses.