Exploring Students' Compassion Outcomes within a Dental School's Tobacco Treatment Training Program: A pilot study

Purpose It has been suggested that compassion may decrease as students progress through their health care education and into clinical practice. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether an immersive curriculum thread of tobacco use disorder (TUD) cessation methodology, including behavioral techniques and communication skills, was associated with any change in dental hygiene and dental students perceived levels of compassion.Methods Dental hygiene (DH) and dental (DS) students (n=300) who had experienced an immersive TUD curriculum from West Virginia University were invited to complete the Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scale-Toward Others (SOC-O) online survey during the academic years 2022-2023. Possible scores on the SOC-O ranged from 20 (no or low compassion) to 100 (high compassion). The SOC-O scores for students who did not have clinical experience and limited TUD content (first- and second-year DH and DS students) were compared with SOC-O scores of students who had clinically applied the immersive tobacco cessation curriculum thread (third and fourth year DH and DS students) using t-tests.Results A total of seventy DH and DS students completed the SOC-O survey for a response rate of 23.3%. The overall mean SOC-O score was 83.0 for participants who lacked clinical experience (DH1, DH2, DS1, DS2) and 85.8 for participants with clinical experience using the TUD content (DH3, DH4, DS3, DS4) (p >0.05). For the SOC-O subscale analysis, both groups were similar in the recognition of suffering, universality of suffering, empathy/compassion for a person suffering, tolerance of uncomfortable feelings, and action/motivation to act to alleviate suffering.Conclusion A high level of perceived compassion among dental hygiene and dental students was associated with an immersive behavioral sciences curriculum thread for the assessment/treatment of TUD. Perceived levels of compassion were maintained for participants with and without clinical experience. Additional focus on compassion philosophy research within educational methodology is needed to maintain and improve compassion outcomes in the health care professions.