Interprofessional teaching of communication skills for oral health promotion

Historically, with little exposure to graphic media during training, dentists have been expected on graduation to be able to promote oral health using visual media forms. The interprofessional Dentistry/Design project is an innovative method of teaching students the skills required for successful promotion of community oral health in published media. Objectives: To enable students to develop evidence-based oral health promotion materials appropriate for a target audience. Methods: Students were provided with lectures and electronic resources before being assigned to a supervised small work-group comprising three dental students and two design students. The group task was to design promotional products for caries prevention for a specific target audience. They were required to review literature about caries prevention, target audience characteristics and design concepts likely to appeal to the audience and then collaborate in developing five products: a booklet for health educators working with the target group containing the evidence base, two promotional products (poster, brochure, web-site, DVD, Tshirt etc), a portfolio of design concepts and a power-point presentation for peers. The groups presented their work in peer-teaching seminars and evaluated the program as a learning experience using the Unit of Study Evaluation Questionnaire. The products were assessed for health evidence-base by the Faculty of Dentistry and quality of design by the Faculty of Architecture. Results: Thirty student groups successfully developed an oral health promotion program of suitable quality for publication as evaluated by the two teaching faculties. The student groups were unanimous in their evaluation of the program as a valuable learning experience. All projects will be used during Australia's 2008 Oral Health Awareness Week. Conclusion: The interprofessional learning project is successful in enabling dental students to understand and use graphic media effectively for oral health promotion.