Listening to Others: An Educational Approach for Understanding the Poor

Objectives: To develop pedagogical tools and an educational program designed to help oral health professionals acquire the skills, knowledge and competencies to better treat underprivileged people. Ultimately, our goal is to improve interactions between dentists and people on social assistance and increase access to dental services for the latter.

Methods: This participatory project was conducted in the province of Quebec, Canada from Nov. 2006 to Dec 2007. On the basis of close partnerships between universities and governmental bodies, anti-poverty groups and professional organizations (Order of dentists and Order of dental hygienists), a working committee comprised of 12 of their representatives was set up. The group met approximately every 3 months over the course of the year addressing all aspects of the pedagogical tools' development including content, format, issues of copyright, distribution and evaluation. The collaborative process inherent to the participatory approach involved consensual decision-making and shared power.

Results: The main pedagogical tool produced is a DVD in which 6 people on social assistance –interviewed and filmed for that purpose – talk about their lives, giving testimony on topics such as: Pathways to/from poverty; Daily life of a person on social assistance; Health and relationships with professionals. Further supported by written documents and a study guide, this tool will be accessible to professionals through a web-based continuing education program and provided to undergraduate students in their faculties of dentistry/schools of dental hygiene.

Conclusions: Even though the efficacy of our pedagogical tools have yet to be evaluated, we expect them to prove powerful for fostering a better understanding of welfare recipients, on the part of health professionals. We invite other professional schools to work on such approaches in order to improve access to dental services for underprivileged people.

This study received financial support from RSBO (FRSQ).