Dental Anesthesia Technique & Review: An Instructional Design Project

Abstract

At the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene, Dental Hygiene Program, students are taught every aspect of dental hygiene. One important responsibility of the dental hygienist is successfully and safely administering local anesthesia. The aim of this project is to provide junior and senior dental hygiene students a classroom review prior to clinically administering local anesthesia on live patients. In prior years, students were required to pass three paper quizzes which tested the students’ knowledge of local anesthesia techniques and concepts. Within the last two years, faculty noticed that students were not prepared for this aspect of clinic. Observing the drastic change, this project was developed to bridge the gap by mentally and clinically preparing students to administer local anesthesia. The purpose of this instructional design project was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an online module to prepare students with basic intraoral local anesthetic techniques for a clinical setting for junior and senior dental hygiene students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Dental Hygiene Program. The curated website was created through Wix.com and includes important content and useful pictures as visuals. The project involved 38 students, all were asked to complete a demographic survey, pre-test, embedded test, post-test, and an attitudinal survey. All data collected through Google Forms, were summarized, analyzed and conclusions made. Results reflected positive outcomes, and students found the review beneficial.