One-minute preceptor as a microskills teaching and learning model in operative dentistry clinical settings: a student...

Clinical teaching of dentistry often takes place in busy patient-care environments, where there may not be sufficient time for real-time supervision or feedback, compromising student learning during clinical encounters. The One-Minute Preceptor (OMP) is a structure microskills model of teaching which has been developed for efficient clinical teaching in brief encounters. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the OMP model as a microskills teaching and learning approach in operative dentistry clinical settings, with particular emphasis on student learning, reasoning, clinical performance, and perceptions of its usefulness in busy clinical environments.

A randomized controlled educational intervention with a two-group pretest-posttest design was conducted among third-year Bachelor of Dental and Oral Surgery students. Fifty students who provided written informed consent were included in the study. Using simple randomization with a random number table, participants were allocated to either a control group (n = 26) receiving traditional clinical teaching or an intervention group (n = 24) receiving teaching based on the One-Minute Preceptor model. Student perceptions of the OMP model were collected using a structured 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire.

Following the intervention, students in the OMP group exhibited significant improvement across nearly all assessed domains, whereas the control group showed either minimal gains or slight declines in several areas. Post-intervention ratings showed statistically significant improvements (p < 0.01) across most items, particularly within the domains of Commitment, Probe, Feedback, and Overall Competence. Students in the intervention group reported high satisfaction with the OMP model, with most rating it as beneficial for learning in restorative dentistry clinical sessions.

The findings of this study suggest that the OMP model may be a useful teaching and learning approach for operative dentistry clinical settings, with improvement observed in several assessed student performance domains and positive student perceptions regarding its applicability in busy clinical environments. Further studies with larger samples and more robust statistical analyses are warranted.