Educational Models for the Re‐Establishment of Dental Therapy Education in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
With the closure of the Canadian dental therapy program in Saskatchewan in 2011 and the increasing need for oral health providers, there have been growing discussions at the national and provincial levels regarding the re-establishment of a provider with dental therapy abilities. The aims of this study were to define models for dental therapy education in Canada and explore how dental therapy abilities could best be integrated into Canadian post-secondary education. In 2017, purposeful sampling was used to invite key informants to participate in a semi-structured interview. Participants were individuals from government, education, and regulation and those working with underserved populations in Canada and internationally. A 75% response rate (n=53) was achieved. Thematic analysis was employed for coding of data and generation of themes. Respondents highlighted the need to include minimally invasive restorative services in the current scope of dental hygiene practice across all Canadian jurisdictions and to build dental therapy abilities with or upon accredited dental hygiene curricula. The models supported by respondents were a fourth-year option built on three-year diploma education, a one-year postgraduate diploma based on a baccalaureate degree and a current dental hygiene registration, and a three-year dental therapy diploma incorporating core courses in accredited dental hygiene diploma education. While the respondents' views were divergent, the educational model that received the most support involved a two- to three-term addition to current three-year dental hygiene diploma education. In contrast to international trends, the respondents valued learner flexibility to exit with a diploma dental hygiene credential, thus making the dental therapy scope optional. These educational models provide a starting point for further analysis and exploration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".