Early Clinical Experiences for Dental Students Using Near Peer Assisted Learning (NPAL)

This paper describes Doctor of Dental Surgery students' perspectives on participating in NPAL sessions at the School of Dentistry at the University of Alberta. NPAL provides early clinical experiences (ECE) for junior students (mentees) assisted by senior students (mentors).

A convergent, parallel mixed method of concurrently collecting and analysing quantitative and qualitative data was used. Junior students completed daily forms and a written reflective assignment. Senior students completed an end-of-year survey and participated in a focus group.

Most junior students found their NPAL sessions useful and their interactions with senior peers very positive. Benefits included an enhanced sense of the importance of patient care and the opportunity to apply concepts in practice. Senior students appreciated the collegiality and support provided by the mentees. The majority of senior students reported that their NPAL experiences as mentees themselves during the early years of the program helped with their transition to fully immersive comprehensive patient care in the third year. Recommendations for improvement included ensuring all mentees are exposed to a wide range of patient cases and have more opportunities to perform procedures.

ECE using NPAL enabled junior students to become comfortable in the clinical environment and perform simple procedures on patients as their skill set developed. Senior students also benefited from the experiences as they provided opportunities to develop mentorship and leadership skills. This strategy may be useful for other institutions interested in implementing early clinical experiences to ease the pre-clinical-clinical transition for students.