The leap from simulation to clinical practice

Students must move from the pre-clinical environment into the live clinical environment.
We have to help and support them…..
Land safely
With confidence
With the needed skills
The transition is described as Leap - Students take off from one environment
There is a sense of launching into an unknown space
Until solid ground is felt beneath their feet, they are disconnected
we start within teh conventional simualtion:
“These simulation laboratories are a vast improvement over older equipment,
but the basic educational structure is the same.
Students are:
shown models,
didactic information,
diagrams,
pictures, etc.,
are asked to repeatedly perform procedures on plastic teeth.
The student’s product is then graded by an instructor who usually gives verbal feedback as well”
Students desire: A personal learning experience
Instant gratification
They are needy!
The institution, on the other hand is under financial pressures.
The Academic Staff have increasing workloads.
Clearly: there is a problem.
We need to consider:
What really happens in the clinic
Offer a transition away from the millimetre driven template preparations
Move toward management of the biological disease and respond to the disease distribution in the tooth
Consider the survival to the tooth and the restorative material
Develop clinical decision-making skills in the students
Consider using: cases in both the conventional and haptic simulation.

Manage a case using the same processes as in the clinic.
the outcome is that the students love it!
Tutors find it intense, however they see the students growing in their decision making skills.