Assessment of Dental Undergraduate Students’ Skills in Local Anesthesia Administration: A Longitudinal Study

Objectives: To investigate the quantitative impact of experience on competence in local anesthetic administration amongst final-year Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) students. Methods: A Longitudinal cohort study design was employed. Purposive sampling was used to enrol final year BDS students and assess their competence longitudinally over a full academic year. The assessment criteria and scoring structure were reviewed during inspection of the institution by the regulator and the external examiner. Participants were assessed on four occasions, namely, after they had gained experience in performing 15, 40, 70 and 100 patient encounters involving local anesthetic administration. Results: A total of 177 participants who were assessed including 31 males (18%) and 146 females (82%). Assessment of the participants on four occasions provided a total of 885 data points. A chi-square test was carried out to test the hypothesis. Students in Group 4 with over 100 patient encounters were most likely to pass assessment, while students in 1 with 15 patient encounters were most likely to fail. There was a statistically significant variation in the proportion of ‘Below Standard’, ‘Meets Standard’ and ‘Exceeds Standard’ judgements awarded to students with differing levels of prior experience (p <0.001), confirming the research hypothesis. Data on differential performance of students by gender did not show significant differences. Conclusions: The results of this study show a linear relationship between the number of patient encounters involving administration of local anesthesia and demonstration of competency amongst final year dental students. Over 90% students achieved competence after performing 100 patient encounters.