Shared Ambiguity but Different Experiences and Demands among Dental Students — A Gender Perspective

Abstract

Shared ambiguity but different experiences and demands among dental students -a gender perspective AbstractThis study explores how dental students experience their clinical semesters from a gender perspective. Twelve students (seven women and five men) and three teachers (two women and one man) at the Umeå dentistry programme participated in semistructured interviews that were analysed with Grounded Theory methodology.The model we propose consists of the core category Experiencing ambiguity and the three categories Experiencing pressure and stress, Assessing your own performance, and Passing through the eye of the needle and also includes four subcategories. At the core of our findings lies ambiguity, captured in the student dilemmas What's enough/When's enough. The answers to these dilemmas are further complicated by the gendered dimension and the dimension of unequal treatment, which provide students with different and contradicting sets of rules and roles. A comparison with recent findings from the U.S. shows that their experiences are not unique.Our Experiencing ambiguity model constitutes a platform for future research on how students experience clinical education, as well as potential predictors and consequences in relation to performance and well-being.

Perceived sources of stress amongst Chilean and Argentinean dental students

“…Stress factor analyses revealed some variation in perceived stressors between males and females and students in different study years, which is in agreement with previous findings (6,20,22,32,36,43). Whilst other studies did not detect any gender differences (9,44), it has been suggested that males and females differ in the way they perceive and cope with the challenges of the educational environment (45,46), as well as in their reporting of perceived stressors (36). With regard to variations in perceived stress throughout the course of studies, this finding is in agreement with what both longitudinal studies of Polychronopoulou (32) and Silverstein (6) reported.…”

The ubiquity of uncertainty: a scoping review on how undergraduate health professions’ students engage with uncertainty

“…Most studies reported on cohorts of medical and nursing students, with mentions also of physiotherapy, midwifery, veterinary, dentistry and pharmacy students. All stages of undergraduate training are represented Finnerty & Pope 2005 ; Rowan et al 2008 ; Schéle et al 2011 ; Nevalainen et al 2012 ; Hazel et al 2013 ; Hancock et al 2017 ; Friary et al 2018 ; Porteous and Machin 2018 ; Brondani & Donnelly 2020 ; Jowsey et al 2020 ; Kashbour et al 2019 Types of uncertainty Types of uncertainty can be categorised into: (i) uncertainty related to practice of healthcare itself; (ii) uncertainty related to the educational process; and (iii) uncertainty related to the self. The types of uncertainty that learners experienced, and their concerns around these, evolved as they progressed through their education Sobal & DeForge 1991 ; Biley & Smith 1999 ; Huijer et al 2000 ; Carr et al 2001 ; Warner et al 2001 ; Lingard et al 2003a ; Martinez & Lo 2008 ; Maudsley et al 2008 ; Rowan et al 2008 ; Ganesh & Ganesh 2010 ; Nevalainen et al 2010 ; Krupat et al 2011 ; Leh 2011 ; Schéle et al 2011 ; Teunissen & Westerman 2011 ; Watkins et al 2011 ; Nevalainen et al 2012 ; Hazel et al 2013 ; Landeen et al 2013 ; Curtis 2014 ; Kristiansson et al 2014 ; Nixon et al 2014 ; Bassett et al 2015 ; Ion et al 2015 ; Stone et al 2015 ; Ali et al 2017 ; Toivonen et al 2017 ; Dodgson et al 2018 ; Handwerker …”

“…Some studies commented on learners avoiding or denying uncertainty, especially in situations where they were being assessed. Many researchers indicated that learners undergo a maturation process with respect to uncertainty Riegelman et al 1983 ; Geller et al 1990 ; Merrill et al 1994 ; Huijer et al 2000 ; Lingard et al 2003a ; Lingard et al 2003b ; Balentine et al 2010 ; Ganesh & Ganesh 2010 ; Nevalainen et al 2010 ; Schéle et al 2011 ; Frambach et al 2012 ; Nevalainen et al 2012 ; Landeen et al 2013 ; Al-Kloub et al 2014 ; Curtis 2014 ; Kristiansson et al 2014 ; Han et al 2015 ; Sawanyawisuth et al 2015 ; Neve et al 2017 ; Helmich et al 2018 ; Mangione et al 2018 ; Markey et al 2018 ; Porteous & Machin 2018 ; Steinauer et al 2018 ; Kashbour et al 2019 ; Markey et al 2019 ; Stephens et al 2020 Impact on learning Studies examined correlations between students’ capacity to manage uncertainty in relation to their academic performance, career preferences, ability to empathise, and attitudes towards patients. Several papers proposed that uncertainty presents a barrier to learning, whilst others considered that it could be productive Morton et al 2000 ; Lingard et al 2003a , b ; Finnerty & Pope 2005 ; Ironside et al 2009 ; Nevalainen et al 2010 ; Wayne et al 2011 ; Frambach et al 2012 ; Al-Kloub et al 2014 ; Duvivier et al 2014 ; van Ryn et al 2014 ; Eley et al 2017 ; Friary et al …”

Stress and Burnout Assessment Among Post Graduate Dental Students

“…18,19,20,21 professionals.This could be attributed to socio cultural differences, different psychological attributes5,22,23 related to coping skills and vulnerability to life events.Our study revealed high levels of burnout among the postgraduates with more than 54% of the postgraduates feeling low Personal Accomplishment and 29% feeling burnout with Depersonalization , and 21 % Emotionally…”