Evaluation of an individual anamnesis tool for teaching risk-oriented prevention – a pilot study in undergraduate dental students

BACKGROUND: A comprehensive medical history is needed to establish and ensure a high standard in dental care; however, it is challenging to draw clinical consequences on the variety of potential diseases and medications, especially for dental students. Aim of this observational study was to investigate, whether undergraduate dental students using an analog anamnesis tool for risk classification would be more confident and have more knowledge in risk classification than other students in the same year of study. METHODS: A cohort of 48 fifth year dental students was included and allocated into two groups based on their curriculum-related division (group A: n = 25, group B: n = 23). Group A received a teaching event and provision of an analog anamnesis tool for risk classification; group B received neither a teaching event nor the anamnesis tool. At baseline and after two weeks (follow-up), questionnaires regarding self-perceived confidence with risk classification, questions on different disease, medications and lifestyle factors and a task with 15 medical histories of prepared patient cases were applied. The data was statistically analyzed using Mann–Whitney or Wilcoxon test. RESULTS: In group comparison of the differences between baseline and follow-up regarding self-perceived confidence, significantly higher improvement was noted in group A compared to group B for all questions (p < 0.05). With regard to knowledge, the group comparison revealed that the differences in all of the four tasks were significantly higher in group A compared to group B (pi ≤ 0.01). Thereby, the different tasks in group A differed between baseline and follow-up as follows: Risk of complications: 49.04 ± 13.59 vs. 67.96 ± 17.22, p < 0.01, Risk of oral diseases: 48.77 ± 13.57 vs. 63.44 ± 16.78, p = 0.01, Indication of antibiotic prophylaxis: 75.70 ± 13.45 vs. 87.97 ± 10.37, p < 0.01 and the Medical history task on 15 patient cases: 58.45 ± 4.74 vs. 71.47 ± 9.54, p < 0.01. CONCLUSION: The applied analog anamnesis tool supported an increase in students´ confidence with issues related to at-risk patients alongside with their knowledge in risk classification. The applied anamnesis tool can be recommended for improving teaching of risk management for undergraduate dental students.