Tobacco Dependence Treatment Education for Dental Students

• Cessation treatment abilities [ Time Frame: 3 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Outcome measurements include changes in dental students' attitudes, perceived barrier,subjective norms, perceived skills, self-efficacy, intentions to provide cessation treatment, and tobacco cessation knowledge after completing a cessation treatment educational activity using standardized patients.
  
  

The experimental study has a pretest-posttest design. It evaluates the changes to dental students' attitudes, perceived barriers, subjective norms, perceived skills, self-efficacy, intentions to provide cessation treatment, and tobacco cessation knowledge between those students receiving a lecture along with practice sessions using standardized patients and those students receiving only a lecture. Dental students will be invited to complete two questionnaires. The control group of dental students will complete the first questionnaire before the lecture and the second questionnaire after the lecture. The experimental group of dental students will complete the first questionnaire before the lecture and the second questionnaire after the lecture and the practice and debriefing sessions. Subjects will include 120 first year dental students in an introductory course to clinical dentistry. The cessation training is a required activity in the course. Students are divided into small groups according to their bench or lab numbers. These numbers are assigned to the student based on the alphabetical order of their name. The eligibility criteria is: 1) Must be a first year dental student in Introduction to Clinical Dentistry 1 at the University of Louisville, and 2) Must be willing to volunteer to complete pre- and post-questionnaires about the cessation treatment educational program. The exclusion criteria is: Subject is not willing to give consent to complete the pre- and post- questionnaire.