Reinventing pediatric dental training in Singapore

Managing pediatric dental patients can be stressful for dental students and inexperienced practitioners, particularly when communicating with fearful and uncooperative children. Previous studies found that dental students experience three times the stress levels of seasoned specialists.

Delivering effective behavior guidance in clinical settings demands confidence, strong communication skills and the ability to adapt in real time—qualities typically developed through personalized faculty feedback during live sessions. Now, educators at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Dentistry have identified a promising approach to enhance the efficiency and scalability of this training process.

In a recent study published in the scientific journal JMIR Medical Education, Dr. Ishreen Kaur, Dr. Gabriel Lee and Associate Professor Hu Shijia demonstrated that dental students’ skills in handling children’s behavior can be accurately assessed using only text transcripts.

Their findings revealed that transcript-based evaluations produced results comparable to those obtained from assessments of full video-recorded clinical sessions.

These findings could significantly reduce the time and manpower required for clinical teaching, especially in settings where faculty resources are stretched. Instead of reviewing lengthy videos, educators may be able to assess student performance more quickly through transcripts while still delivering meaningful personalized feedback.

Hu said, “These findings allow us to enhance training for our dental students by providing more personalized and insightful feedback on their interactions with young patients. With a better understanding of each student’s needs, we can better tailor our training to help them grow into more confident and effective dentists, ultimately providing better care for young patients.”

If proved effective, this method could potentially be adapted to other disciplines to enhance patient communication and applied in broader health care contexts, such as nursing and medicine, to improve the management of child patients.

The study also highlights the future potential of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) in dental education. Because transcript-based evaluations can be processed digitally, the approach opens the door for AI-powered large language models (LLMs) to assist in analyzing student interactions and generating feedback.

In the long term, the NUS Dentistry team envisions the development of a “virtual mentor” system that could support clinical training, helping dental students build confidence and communication skills in pediatric care while enabling teaching faculty to focus on higher-level mentorship and more personalized guidance.

To this end, the research team plans to carry out a follow-up study assessing the effectiveness of using AI to provide feedback to dental students on their behavior management skills during actual clinical sessions.

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Sadie Harley

BSc Life Sciences & Ecology. Microbiology lab background with pharmaceutical news experience in oil, gas, and renewable industries.

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Andrew Zinin

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