Education Strategies for Integrating Evidence Based Principles into a Two Year Dental Hygiene Program

In 1995, the committee on the future of dental education wrote; Dental Education at the Crossroads, a text whose charge was to identify measures to strengthen dental and dental hygiene education. The committee found that the dental education environment promoted passive education instead of critical thinking and lifelong learning. The purpose of this research was to investigate education strategies that support critical thinking and lifelong learning by utilizing the principles of evidence based learning. The method this research employed was the critical incident theory to test teaching strategies of; basic computer literacy, case study investigation and planning the steps of a literature review. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected from three activity-based critical incidents. Results demonstrated that dental hygiene students at the undergraduate level are capable of applying evidence based principles with case studies and literature reviews which may be applicable to patient care.