Introduction of an interprofessional oral health curriculum

Purpose Physician assistants can incorporate a variety of oral health services into their practices, but many physician assistant programs do not dedicate adequate time to oral health education. Our goal was to develop a novel and interprofessional oral health education curriculum model for our physician assistant students that could be adopted by other physician assistant programs and dental schools in the United States. Methods Curricula were created collaboratively and taught by dental school faculty with a focus on the primary care setting. Prewritten and postwritten tests were administered along with a clinical skills examination. Student and faculty evaluations were administered for pedagogical evaluation. Results Pretests and posttests demonstrated a 25% increase in knowledge acquisition (paired t test: P <.001). Physical examination skills testing achieved a 95% completion rate. Student and faculty evaluations demonstrated high satisfaction rates with the curricula delivery. Conclusions Initial evaluation of this novel interprofessional curriculum for physician assistant students demonstrates that it was successful. It was well-received by the students and the faculty members and resulted in measurable knowledge acquisition. This model could feasibly be reproduced in other institutions for oral health education.