Identifying training needs of healthcare providers to implement caries risk assessment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Early childhood caries remains a pressing concern among Indigenous children in Canada, driven by systemic inequities, limited access to care, and fragmented service delivery. Integrating caries risk assessment (CRA) into primary care presents an opportunity to improve early detection and prevention. This study explored the training needs and preferred delivery methods of non-dental primary care providers (NDPCPs) to support CRA implementation in Indigenous pediatric settings. Methods: This qualitative exploratory study involved 50 NDPCPs serving First Nations and Métis children under six years of age across 10 communities in Manitoba. Data were collected between April 2023 and February 2025 through eight focus groups and 12 key informant interviews, followed by brief individual interviews to assess preferred training modalities. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify key training needs and preferences. Results: Participants included physicians, nurse practitioners, public health nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, and child development workers. Four core training areas were identified: dental caries screening, CRA tool usage, fluoride varnish application, and documentation/referral processes. An additional cross-cutting theme emphasized the importance of culturally safe and trauma-informed training. Despite recognizing the CRA tool's value and ease of use, participants reported limited formal training in preventive oral health and stressed the need for hands-on, culturally appropriate instruction. Preferred training modalities varied by geography: urban providers favored blended in-person and online approaches, while rural providers preferred online formats due to travel constraints. Overall, in-person and interactive training was most preferred. Conclusion: NDPCPs require structured, context-specific training to effectively integrate CRA into routine care. A hybrid training model combining online modules with locally delivered, hands-on learning may best address geographic and resource-based disparities. Training content should be simple, skill-focused, and culturally responsive to support NDPCPs in delivering equitable oral healthcare to Indigenous children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".