Comparisons Between Preclinical and Clinical Dental Students’ Perceptions of the Educational Climate at the College of Dentistry, Jazan University

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the preclinical and clinical undergraduate dental students' perceptions of their educational climate (EC). In addition it will be compared with other local and international studies. Materials and Methods: Students enrolled in their third and fourth years (preclinical phase) and students in their fifth and sixth years (clinical phase) of the Bachelor of Dental Science at the University of Jazan, Saudi Arabia, were invited to complete a WhatsApp media survey, which included demographics and the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM). This scale measured students' overall perceptions of the EC in five domains: learning, teaching, academic self-perception, atmosphere, and social self-perception. Data were analyzed with Student's t-tests and ANOVA to compare between and within groups. Results: A total of 272 participants, 140 (51.5%) preclinical and 132 (48.5%) clinical students,took part in the study. Students were generally positive about their learning climate, with overall DREEM scores of 125.19 and 126.21 (preclinical) to 124.10 (clinical) out of a possible score of 200 phases. Student's perceptions of teaching (26.18±3.24/72.72%) and atmosphere (28.08±5.29/63.82%) were the highest and lowest scores, respectively, and both scores were positive. Conclusion: No differences between the preclinical and clinical phases of the curriculum point to the structure of learning, teaching, academic, social self-perception in health professional degrees. Further research should investigate the weak points in the social and atmospheric climate.

A Systematic Review of Publications Using the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) to Monitor Education in Medical Colleges in Saudi Arabia

“…It has been continually used to measure the strengths and weaknesses of educational environment of all health institutes. DREEM is now used in more than 20 countries and has been translated in many languages, such as Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and Urdu [16][17][18][19][20][21]. Only 40 (25 medical colleges, 5 applied medical science colleges, 10 dental colleges) out of the 96 studies reporting DREEM scores met the criteria for this systematic review.…”

“…The remaining papers were assessed based on their titles and abstracts. In addition, 56 published articles were removed because they were not conducted in SA (36) or used other indices (20). This review assessed the full text of 40 articles that met all of the inclusion criteria based on predefined eligibility criteria.…”

“…Applied medical science colleges studies (5) were conducted in Abha, Jeddah, Riyadh, Al Maddinah Al Manwareh, and Makkah [62][63][64][65][66]. Lastly, in the 10 dental studies, 3 were performed in Al Maddinah Al Manwareh and 2 were conducted in Jazan [20][21][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]. Table 3 summarizes the characteristics of the selected papers' DREEM and its 5 domains conducted in different health specialties in SA.…”

“…Few articles mentioned significant differences among colleges [46,54,64], universities [47,60], and specialties [62,64], and other studies indicated significant differences among parameters such as marital status and cumulative grades [69,73]. Among different educational levels or study phases (preclinical and clinical), significant differences were found among students from medical colleges [39,42,46,49,52,55,57], applied medical science colleges [63,65], and dental colleges [20,74]. Similar conclusions were achieved worldwide [17,24,31,39,75].…”

“…DREEM was developed by a Delphi panel, and it has been used to highlight the weaknesses and strengths of educational environments in dental colleges, medical colleges, and applied medical science colleges. It has also been translated and copied to many languages, such as Turkish, Romanian, Spanish, Greek, Urdu, and Arabic [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Table 2 shows how to interpret the overall DREEM score and its 5 domains.…”