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About Study Course

Department: Department of Conservative Dentistry and Oral Health
Credit points / ECTS:2 / 3
Course supervisor:Egita Senakola
Study type:Full time
Course level:Master's
Target audience:Dentistry
Language:English, Latvian
Branch of science:Clinical Medicine; Oral Medicine

Objective

Part 1. To raise awareness of possibilities for public dental care, to create positive, professional attitude to promotion of general and oral health and to raise awareness of planning and development of different oral health promotion and education programmes for different age groups. Part 2. To create knowledge, skills and competencies so that students can find answers to clinical questions with scientific methods, mainly by understanding scientific methodology at a level that allows them to read and critically analyze the scientific literature.

Prerequisites

Preventive Dentistry course, Periodontology.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge

Will get understanding of the principles of primary health care, common risk factor approach, systems for Oral healthcare in Latvia and abroad. Understanding of principles, approaches for oral health promotion and education, role of the dental team in oral and health promotion. Recognize the principles of the scientific method. Identify successes and problems of medical science today. Recognize the concept of Evidence-Based Medicine. Identify basic clinical-epidemiological research design. Identify basic research questions. Differentiate sites with information for patients or professionals. Identify biomedical search engines for published articles.
Identify the ethical principles of medical research. Identify the ethical regulations guiding medical research.
Recognize major ethical issues in research.

Skills

Upon completion of the course the students will be able to evaluate and use into their practical work the basic principles of health promotion and education. Will be able at first to understand and suggest preventive programmes and strategies opposite to treatment regimen in dentistry. Will be able to evaluate dental patients' preventive needs - eating habits, dental hygiene skills, give smoking cessation advices, educate dental patients how to prevent dental trauma and act in case of a trauma. Perform a search for medical information on the internet and validate it. Perform a search for medical research on selected search engines. Apply criteria for validating medical information on the Internet.

Competence

Upon completion of the course the students will have ability to educate dental patients and to provide primary oral health care for population in different age groups. Will have ability to develop and take part in the process of implementation of different oral health promotion programmes for different age groups. This introductory medical research course provides the competencies that allow the student to recognize the role of research in clinical practice and the basic skills for the search and critical evaluation of medical information.

Study course planning

Planning period:Year 2024, Spring semester
Study programmeStudy semesterProgram levelStudy course categoryLecturersSchedule
Dentistry, ZF6Master’sRequiredEgita Senakola, Ilze Maldupa
Dentistry, SSNSF6Master’sRequiredEgita Senakola, Sergio Andres Uribe Espinoza