Addressing gaps in transversal educational contents in undergraduate dental education. The audio-visual "pill of knowledge" approach.

Introduction Training on impression disinfection is often limited to brief explanations in the clinic. This investigation assessed knowledge on this topic amongst clinical students in our university, produced a pill of knowledge to suit their needs, and evaluated its impact and acceptance. Material and Methods A pre-post study was designed to identify knowledge gaps using an anonymous, voluntary self-applied questionnaire before and after watching an audio-visual clip (pill of knowledge). All 136 students in the school were invited to enter the study (estimated sample size: 116). Results Participants: 109 (26.6% in 3rd year; 37.6% in 4th year and 39.4% in 5th year). Participation dropped 10.29% (n = 95) in the post-intervention survey. Knowledge improvement was higher for those impression materials included in the pill. Most students (68.4%) reported to know more about impression disinfection after the pill and 70.5% felt more able to achieve correct disinfection. The pill was particularly well received (86.3%). All students would recommend it to their peers, and 93.5% are willing to receive pills on other topics. Discussion Our results disclosed an important gap in knowledge, which can be filled by a single, brief and concise pill adapted to the intended audience. Once made readily available through digital repositories, it may help solve this problem, given the ubiquitous presence of mobile devices. Conclusions Our results found pills of knowledge as a useful approach to facilitating undergraduates' learning process. This method, using suitable information and communication technologies, has the potential to improve the performance on certain clinical tasks.