LAUSR

Introduction: Many patients who attend A&E services attend with dental issues, and unfortunately many doctors get limited dental teaching. The aim was to create an e-learning course and evaluate its effectiveness via the use of preand postcourse tests. Method: 21 A&E doctors from two trusts (Morriston Hospital and Princess of Wales Hospital) were invited to take part in a pre-test made up of 5 multiple choice questions and were then given an electronic copy of the course, covering 3 main topics (dental trauma, dental abscesses, and post-extraction complications). The doctors were then requested to fill out a post-test questionnaire after completion of the course and return the results. 11 responses were received, and the preand posttests were statistically analyzed. Results: The average result from a pre-test was 1.95 across the 21 original tests. 10 people did not return the post-test questionnaire. Of the eleven who did, all the post-test results were better than the pre-test results, with an average increase of 2.55 points (maximum mark 5 points), with a p value of <0.01. Feedback from the participants stated that the immediate management for two patients was altered within a 6-week period (one A&E doctor stated that she used tranexamic acid topically to manage a bleeding socket, and another A&E doctor correctly identified that a tooth was not avulsed following a traumatic incident). Conclusion: The results from this study suggests that A&E doctors found the course useful, and benefitted from the content, which has had a positive impact on patient care. The course has been submitted to the RCEM (royal college of emergency medicine) with the aim of it becoming available on the RCEM learning website, with doctors being able to claim CPD hours for taking part in the course. *Correspondence to: Arif Razzak, OMFS, Swansea Morriston Hospital, Swansea, UK, E-mail: [email protected] Received: October 04, 2018; Accepted: October 11, 2018; Published: October 16, 2018 Introduction In the UK and England, it has been suggested that around 0.7% of accident and emergency (A&E) attendance is due to dental pain. Unfortunately, patients who attend in this manner are often not assessed by someone who is dentally qualified [1]. Patients may also attend A&E with other dental issues, namely post-operative bleeding following extractions, and with dental trauma (either isolated, or associated with other injuries arising from the trauma). Previous studies have shown that many emergency department senior house offices (SHOs) have limited training and knowledge with dealing with dental issues [2]. Considering that the SHO’s questioned in a study by Patel et al reported to see between 1 and 5 dental issues each week, it is some cause of concern that 52% reported never having any training on examination of the mouth [2]. Medical education can be both time consuming, as well as costly, and dental pathology is likely to rank low on an essential list of information that needs to be implemented by emergency department staff, potentially explaining the lack of training, experience, and confidence in dealing with these cases [3]. Electronic based learning systems are becoming more common and have been shown in various instances to be a cost-effective method of providing teaching [4,5]. The authors therefore felt that an e-learning course would be beneficial to effectively distribute training and core information, and so created an e-learning course, and evaluated its effectiveness.