Course overview
Population Health & Professional Practice IIOH (PHPP) builds on the PHPP year one curriculum which has been designed to enable the development of skills required to be a critical decision maker in the contemporary role of an Oral Health Therapist (OHT). Oral Health Therapists must make calculated decisions that relate to effective patient care, with community and population health outcomes in mind. Oral Health Therapists must be able to identify significant population oral health trends and developing a deep appreciate for the broader population drivers of those trends.
This course comprises of two content units: Social Context of Dentistry, which aims to increase students' awareness of the role of social context in shaping an individual's dental behaviours and the implications of this for clinical practice. And Evidence-Based Dentistry aims to equip students with the skills necessary to sustain and enhance the clinical practice of dentistry using scientific information published in biomedical journals. Topics include biostatistics and epidemiology.
Course learning outcomes
- An understanding of how social context influences the oralhealth-related behaviour and oral health outcomes of patients who present for dental care
- An awareness and tolerance of socially determined differences in dental behaviour among groups of people
- An insight into the implications of social diversity in the process of clinical decision- making
- Develop a hierarchy of scientific evidence needed for clinical decision-making
- Recognize and be able to evaluate studies of disease frequency and disease risk
- Understand methods used for evaluating diagnostic tests
- Identify and apply to clinical practice information from studies of disease etiology
- Critically evaluate studies of prevention and treatment
- Use principles of risk assessment,treatment evaluation, and decision-making in clinical dental practice, through the development of the hierachy of scientific evidence needed for clinical decision-making