Teledentistry—Dental students’ preparedness and patients’ experiences
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To explore dental students' preparedness, experiences and confidence levels in utilizing teledentistry (TD) for patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic and to determine the dental needs and experiences of patients receiving treatment from dental students through TD. METHODS: Two online surveys were administered through Google Forms, incorporating both five-point Likert scales and open-ended questions alone for the student questionnaire. The patient questionnaire, available in English and Mandarin, was distributed during or after teleconsultations. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data. RESULTS: Out of 125 students, 88% (N = 110) were contacted by 318 patients. Of them, 79.1% reported no telecommunication problems, 91.8% faced no language barriers, and 87.2% encountered no technological barriers. Most students (67.3%) agreed they would need further training in TD. Low confidence levels were observed among 26.3% of students in managing crowns and bridges and among 18.2% of students in managing mucosal conditions. From the patient perspective, 76.4% contacted the students via WhatsApp Messages and 21.0% used the Voice Call mode. About 44.0% of patients enquired about the next available appointment. Their most common concern was tooth pain (15.1%) followed by denture problems (9.1%), chipped fillings (6.6%), and crowns and bridge problems (6.3%). Overall, 82% patients reported effective communication during teleconsultation, 85% were satisfied with the questioning process, and expressed satisfaction with the diagnoses provided. However, 10% of patients chose to ignore their concerns, and 5% sought assistance from medical practitioners. CONCLUSION: Most dental students were confident in addressing patient concerns but recognized the need for additional training for managing complex cases. Both students and patients reported positive experiences with TD, including effective communication and satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of integrating TD training into dental curricula, addressing technical and privacy concerns, and improving patient education for secure and effective TD use in routine care.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
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".