Does Use of an Electronic Health Record with Dental Diagnostic System Terminology Promote Dental Students’ Critical Thinking?

• Published in: Journal of dental education Vol. 79; no. 6; pp. 686 - 696
• Main Authors: Reed, Susan G., Adibi, Shawn S., Coover, Mullen, Gellin, Robert G., Wahlquist, Amy E., AbdulRahiman, Anitha, Hamil, Lindsey H., Walji, Muhammad F., O’Neill, Paula, Kalenderian, Elsbeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Dental Education Association 01-06-2015
• Subjects: Adult; Clinical Coding; clinical education; critical thinking; Cross-Sectional Studies; dental education; Dental Records; Diagnosis, Differential; Diagnosis, Oral - classification; diagnostic terminology; Education, Dental; electronic health record; Electronic Health Records; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Patient Care Planning; Physical Examination; Pilot Projects; Program Evaluation; Students, Dental - psychology; Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine; Terminology as Topic; Thinking; Young Adult; dental education; critical thinking; diagnostic terminology; clinical education; electronic health record
• DOI: 10.1002/j.0022-0337.2015.79.6.tb05942.x
• EISSN: 1930-7837
• ISSN: 0022-0337

The Consortium for Oral Health Research and Informatics (COHRI) is leading the way in use of the Dental Diagnostic System (DDS) terminology in the axiUm electronic health record (EHR). This collaborative pilot study had two aims: 1) to investigate whether use of the DDS terms positively impacted predoctoral dental students’ critical thinking skills measured by the Health Sciences Reasoning Test (HSRT), and 2) to refine study protocols. The study design was a natural experiment with cross‐sectional data collection using the HSRT for 15 classes (2013–17) of students at three dental schools. Characteristics of students who had been exposed to the DDS terms were compared with students who had not, and the differences were tested by t‐tests or chi‐square tests. Generalized linear models were used to evaluate the relationship between exposure and outcome on the overall critical thinking score. The results showed that exposure was significantly related to overall score (p=0.01), with not‐exposed students having lower mean overall scores. This study thus demonstrated a positive impact of using the DDS terminology in an EHR on the critical thinking skills of predoctoral dental students in three COHRI schools as measured by their overall score on the HSRT. These preliminary findings support future research to further evaluate a proposed model of critical thinking in clinical dentistry.