INTRODUCTION

According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the World Health Organization’s goals, reaching health for the whole nation is necessary. Considering this fact, the main aim of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education is to reach, maintain and improve people’s health. It is obvious that training dentists should be in accordance with this aim (1). The curriculum of dentistry which has been used in dental schools throughout the country has been approved on May 20, 2000. In recent years, reviewing the curriculum of general dentistry seems inevitable, and measures have been taken in this regard. The new curriculum has been introduced to schools of dentistry (2). Periodic evaluation of the curriculum is of great importance in identifying issues and solving them.

Since students are the main receivers of dentistry education and directly face its issues, their experiences and points of view about the content, structure and quality of education are considered as a main part of quality control of the curriculum, its evaluation and a great resource for decision making (3, 4).

Oral and maxillofacial pathology deals with the nature and features of diseases concerning the oral and maxillofacial region. Thus, pathology is important regarding health care in medicine and dentistry. It is obvious that all dentists, general and specialist, should have adequate information about pathogenesis, clinical presentations, treatment and prognosis of oral diseases (5).

In the curriculum of dentistry, pathology is considered as an important basic science relating dentistry to medicine and is the basis of learning many principles of clinical courses. In the current curriculum, this course has six theoretical and practical units, and in the new curriculum, along with the practical course, the theoretical course includes systemic diseases, diagnostic dentistry, tooth decay, pulp and periapical diseases, which deals with the origin, diagnosis, control and management of patients with lesions in oral and maxillofacial region and its reports are considered as gold standard in diagnosis (5, 6). A study by Grogoriam in 2002 showed the importance of basic sciences in solving clinical issues by dentists. Pathology, as a theoretical science, has a close connection with the clinic. Today, many new methods as tissue biochemistry, electron microscope and radioisotope are available for pathologic studies (7).

Since students are rather uninterested in learning the material of this course, efforts should be made in this regard so that they learn better. A study by Jahantigh et al. in 2010 investigating educational needs of restorative dentistry by alumni opinions showed that there are some deficiencies in the restorative course (2). In the study of Sanatkhani et al. regarding students’ opinions about teaching and evaluation method in clinical courses in Mashhad School of Dentistry, students believed that there is no significant difference in teaching and evaluation methods among different departments (8). Henzi investigated the dentistry curriculum in different schools of dentistry in the United States and Canada in 2007 and concluded that students are satisfied with their educational 

experiences in general (9). Unfortunately, no study has been done about basic sciences.

Investigating students’ opinions helps better planning to improve the educational quality of the pathology course by modifying the volume, content, number of units and teaching hours of the course. In a study by Moezi in 2009, 89% of the participated students confirmed the efficiency of evaluation by professor and 53% believed this has positive impacts and mentioned scientific knowledge and teaching method as features of a good professor (10).

The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ opinions about oral and maxillofacial pathology course in Mashhad School of Dentistry in 2009-2010 academic year to be a basis for future studies. 

METHODS

School of Dentistry who were passing their third to sixth years of study in 2009-2010 academic year. Census was used for sampling. All students in their third to sixth years of study, either were passing or have passed the pathology course, and were willing to answer the questions participated the study. Students who have passed oral and maxillofacial pathology in other universities were not participated. Also, students could be excluded from the research while answering the questions if they were not willing to continue. Field method was used for data gathering, and data gathering tool was a researcher made questionnaire consisted of 21 questions, which was designed by consulting with oral and maxillofacial pathology members of faculty. The questionnaire was consisted of closed and open-ended questions covering different aspects of teaching oral and maxillofacial pathology.

For validation, the questionnaire was presented to four faculty members of the oral and maxillofacial pathology department and their opinions were included in the questionnaire. To investigate the reliability of the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted on 40 students in two sessions with two-week intervals; the reliability coefficient was upper than 70 percent. In the second semester of the 2009-2010 academic year, unnamed questionnaires were distributed among students of third, fourth, fifth and sixth years. Students were informed about the subject and goals of the questionnaire before filling it. After gathering the questionnaires, they were coded (multiple choice questions were coded based on the number of choices) and were descriptively analyzed using statistical software and tests.

Variables investigated in this study were the students’ attitudes toward different aspects of theoretical and practical courses of oral and maxillofacial pathology, and their success rate in passing the course, which were calculated using the frequency of answers to each question. These questions were about students’ opinions regarding the necessity of passing oral and maxillofacial pathology course, the number of course units, schedule, teaching method, examination method, application in other fields of dentistry, and the effectiveness of this course in diagnosis and treatment of patients.

SPSS 13 was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics including frequency distribution tables, central tendencies, indexes of dispersion, and statistical charts were used for data description.

RESULTS

This study was conducted on 250 students of Mashhad School of Dentistry who have passed theoretical and practical courses of oral and maxillofacial pathology. All students were included completely and answered the questions.

88 (19.68%) of all students failed to pass the pathology courses 1 and 2 at the first time. They believed the most important reasons for failure were being uninterested in the lessons (44.3%), high volume of the course material (37.1%), and difficult examinations (22.9%); only 18.6% mentioned improper teaching as the cause of their failure. A great number of students (42.4%) believed that the number of units of theoretical pathology course are too high, while 54.4% stated that the number of units of practical pathology course is appropriate (Table 1). In this study, most students (52%) believed that the volume of the pathology course material is not in accordance with its number of units (each unit equivalent to 17 hours) and it’s heavy.

Most students (68.8%) believed that it is better to pass theoretical and practical pathology in the third year, like the current curriculum. (Table 2).

Most students were relatively satisfied with the teaching methods (Table 3). Regarding educational improvement methods, 42.9% of students chose quizzes, 16.5% chose only lecturing, 8.2% chose question and answer, and 25.3% chose teacher-student participation.

Regarding the evaluation methods, most students (86.6%) preferred multiple-choice questions (Table 4).

Regarding the application of oral pathology course’s results in other dentistry fields, students believed that it is mostly applicable in the diagnosis of oral diseases and least in prosthesis (Table 5).

Regarding the necessity of oral pathology in dentistry, the following topics were believed to have the most importance respectively: identifying diseases of the oral cavity and maxillofacial diseases (25%), no necessity (18.7%) and identifying pathologic lesions microscopically and how to diagnose them (14.6%) (Table 6).

Periodic investigation of teaching and evaluation methods is significantly important in identifying issues and solving them 

DISCUSSION