Educational board game for training dental and dental hygiene students in patient safety issues

Game-based learning has become increasingly popular in medical education. This study used an originally designed board game to train dental and dental hygiene students in patient safety, investigating the educational value of game-based learning.

A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with three groups of students was adopted (two classes of dental hygiene students and one of dental students). The students received a self-designed board game intervention for patient safety issues. Before and after the intervention, the students took a test to evaluate their knowledge improvement. They also completed a questionnaire that assessed their impressions of and attitudes toward the board game's educational value postintervention.

The participants comprised 27 fifth-year dental students, 23 fourth-year, and 25 third-year dental hygiene students, including 38 men and 37 women. One-way analysis of variance revealed no significant differences in baseline scores for the levels of recall, comprehension, application, and overall knowledge among the three groups of dental and dental hygiene students. Paired t-tests were used to compare the pretest and posttest knowledge scores. The results indicate that there were statistically significant improvements in the levels of recall, comprehension, application, and overall knowledge scores among the three groups. However, the group with dental hygienists as instructors showed significantly greater improvement than the other two. Moreover, the students reported that the most improved abilities were in "create a patient-safety culture and implementincident management" and "prevent patient falls and injuries". Most students agreed that the board game was an effective educational tool and showed positive attitudes toward patient safety.

The board game effectively improved knowledge and awareness of patient safety among dental and dental hygiene students.