How oral cancer is taught: a scoping review

This scoping review aims to examine the current modes of delivery of oral cancer education amongst health care practitioners and students. It also seeks to identify challenges in teaching and gaps within existing educational approaches.

Studies examining the mode of delivery of oral cancer education among any health care practitioners, university students, or training programs were included in the literature search across bibliographic databases.

Thirty-nine studies were found to be eligible for inclusion. A variety of modes of oral cancer education delivery were identified, including oral presentations, hands-on training in head and neck examination, case-based discussions and problem-based learning approaches, clinical observation, biopsy performance, and a range of structured educational models. All teaching methods demonstrated improvements in oral cancer knowledge compared with baseline, to varying degrees. The time allocated to oral cancer education ranged from 0 to 50 h, with a median duration of 2 h.

Consensus on the most effective mode of delivery is lacking; however, findings across all studies indicate that any form of oral cancer education intervention is preferable to none. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to increase the amount of time devoted to oral cancer education across health curricula.