Instructors’ Perspectives of Clinical Performance of Internationally‐Trained Dental Students’ Enrolled in a Qualifying Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This qualitative study explored the instructors' perspectives on the clinical performance of internationally trained dentists (ITD) as dental students, focusing on strengths, limitations, and recommendations for improvement. METHODS: Qualitative description guided the study design. Participants were full-time clinical instructors involved in delivering the DDS Advanced Placement program in the School of Dentistry at the University of Alberta. Instructors were purposefully selected using maximum variation sampling. Data were collected through individual, semi-structured interviews via Zoom, and analyzed using inductive, manifest content analysis in which categories and sub-categories were developed to account for the relevant data. Strategies to ensure methodological rigor included selecting information-rich participants and ensuring that the chosen research methods align with the research objective and are followed as expected. RESULTS: Twelve instructors were interviewed; three were males and nine females ranging in age from 30 to 70 years. The study unveiled notable strengths such as the enthusiasm and dedication of ITD students. Instructors emphasized the need for tailored skill development and cultural competence among ITD students. Areas for improvement included a lack of clinical skills such as composite tooth preparation, hand skills and radiographic interpretation, and habit modification from previous training. Instructors recommended conducting a comprehensive initial assessment, integrating ITD students earlier into the program, tailoring preclinical sessions to address ITD students' learning needs, and providing ongoing cultural training. CONCLUSION: Qualifying dental programs are encouraged to comprehensibly and continuously assess the clinical performance of ITD students to provide the support they need throughout their training. The effectiveness and feasibility of instructors' recommendations to improve these programs remain to be elucidated. Data from these efforts will be crucial in correcting and refining educational strategies and support systems.
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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 | 0.010 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".