Behavioural video to navigate predoctoral dental students toward safer practice (revision of EJE-21-4739)

Local anaesthesia is considered essential knowledge within the dental profession as it helps to address pain management. Operator percutaneous needlestick injuries associated with the delivery of dental anaesthesia are common for dental healthcare providers. The study proposes a supplemental technique to reduce self-inducing novice operator needlestick injury to complement existing pedagogies for the preclinical local anaesthesia curriculum. The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether a local anaesthesia behavioural video can navigate students to safer clinical practice. Further, a supplemental technique is proposed in whether assessing instrument retraction technique in clinical patient care leads to decreased self-inducing intraoral needle stick injury for novice predoctoral dental operator.

Beginning in 2011, predoctoral dental students were asked to view a "what not to do" video within a summative assessment and identify at least five behaviours that were unacceptable errors for delivering local anaesthesia. Operator intraoral needlestick injury was also tracked per the bloodborne exposure reports within predoctoral patient clinics.

Data from the learners' responses identified progression in recognising unacceptable errors from behavioural video. Intraoral needlestick injury, 8 and 9 years prior and after the introduction of video showed significance with a low correlation coefficient.

More data need to be gathered and evaluated in other dental school settings to determine whether this supplemental educational video decreases needlestick injury in novice operators. Results suggest this behavioural video may guide novice operators to overall safer clinical practice.