The field of medicine is ever-evolving, and staying on top of the latest developments is the only way to excel in the area. Dentistry, in particular, is witnessing rapid developments in methods and treatment options. The scope for learning in this field does not end with your course at the dental school. Learning is a continuous process, and it should become an integral part of your profession, even during practice. Gaining knowledge of the various ways you can diagnose and treat your patients is essential to deliver your best efforts as a dentist.
Continuing education credits ensure you can juggle between seeing patients and learning new techniques through courses. Although challenging, these courses offer access to new methods of treatment and care that can be relevant for your patients. There are dental CE online courses as well as offline for the benefit of the dentist. These enable easy access as well as liberty to study as and when possible. Online CE today are offering competent content and exercise opportunities, that makes them an excellent choice for professionals looking to save some time traveling between classes and clinic. If you would like to choose online CE, then here are a few tips to enable you to get to the best choices available.
Continuing education is all about understanding the areas of your interest and practice better. It is about exploring these segments in detail to learn and understand them more. Hence the courses you take should have special segments that offer a chance for your know these areas better. Specific areas such as dental sedation, laser dentistry, could be some of the areas of key interest to your practice and courses that cover these in detail are important for the overall learning experience. Understand what you want to know before you explore these topics to ensure you do not diversify into too many segments with too little to learn. The workshops seminars, course materials everything has to deliver enough content to learn about your specific areas of interest. Preview the chapters of these courses if possible and explore some online reviews or testimonials to know them better.
If your course content only delivers cases where the treatments or methods worked, then this could become dull and non-informative for you. Hence look for courses that offer a mixture of success and failure cases. The content should not always be a success and ideal result specific. Learning to manage any failures that comes in the way is a part of your practice, and course material should expose you to such situations. Alternative methods, learning from failures are a few aspects that can help readers learn the art better.
Look for video supported content:
Today’s world of education is incomplete without visual content to support the matter. As most of these courses relate to everyday practice, high-resolution video can be of huge benefit to the learners. Visual content is more appealing and can deliver the purpose of these lectures much faster and more efficiently. Similarly, look for courses that link you to blogs, forums, and articles that debate and discuss the areas of dentistry for enhanced exposure.
Look for updated courses:
Course materials should cover the latest developments in the various areas of dentistry, which is of most relevance to the dentist. New knowledge that can help them treat patients better is an important part of continuing education. The course material should have evolved with the changes in the area to stay relevant for practice and learning.
Look for responsive courses:
Several websites offer an interactive form of learning through doubt sessions or open dialogue corners near the course material to enable more interaction between the users. This type of learning is more interactive than traditional online courses. It could be your forum to share your knowledge, explore answers for questions, look for suggestions for certain cases. Sessions with the lecturers are also available in some courses which could be of great advantage to you. Look for forums that organize an evaluation, assessment, quiz, apart from these discussions before you chose a course.
Continuing education is a way of alternating between practice and learning for dentists, which means that the course has to deliver the purpose in the most precise way. Dentists have a massive demand on time, and hence long lectures that gobble large chunks of time may not be ideal. Look for course structure where the topics are broken down into small segments you can squeeze during breaks, travel. The delivery could be anywhere between a 15 – 20 minute read, to keep you interested and invested in it. Look for courses that have apps so you can have access to the content anywhere.
Look for a book list:
CE courses that suggest a book list are particularly beneficial. While these courses happen to cover enough content about the topic, having a book list to refer to can be beneficial. This list of books could have inspired the instructor or a particular case, which could be an abundant benefit to you. Books help shape your practice, and hence these book suggestions will go a long way into helping you learn your art better.
Look for good instructors:
Explore demo courses and watch out for the delivery and content of the instructors. Many courses have instructors who claim to share the ideal and the only treatment method that gives the best outcome every time. Beware of studying from such instructors, as it defies the purpose of learning and practicing. There is no one ideal treatment that can give a perfect outcome every time. Your instructor should embrace the difference in every case and establish a set of guidelines and share a personal experience to trigger your knowledge and methods of treatment, rather than restrict you to a certain treatment. Look for instructors with objective deliverables, who are non-dogmatic.
Given most of these courses share treatment methods and practices, the content of the course should present the protocols and guidelines necessary to perform these steps also. This way, it is easy to implement these guidelines into practice with your patients, and there would be no doubts or conflicts about the protocols to follow. Articles, blogs, books, other lectures, that offer these guidelines could be linked to your course material or given as a side note to make practice easier.
Look for the source of the information:
Dentistry is a world of knowledge and practice, and hence your course material should reflect them both. The techniques shared in the course need to be supported by strong material of data, research, clinical trials, statistics. Also, having several personal cases shared is a support material for the content shared. Research-based content for presentation is preferable rather than anecdotal evidence.
Many companies have tie-ups or partnerships with certain manufacturers, which could lead to bias in the course content. Having independent speakers in these courses helps have a pragmatic approach towards dentistry. Clinical -based lessons should come from a third-party, rather than from the manufacturer, to receive a neutral opinion.
Online CE courses help deliver the content with more visual support, in a rather modern and easy way to understand. These courses have new modalities to present examples and case studies, which can have a strong influence on the users compared to traditional readings. Interviews, animations, voice-overs, help strengthen the essence of the course, and good quality videos and photos enrich the experience of the readers. Explore the various course platforms using demo videos to understand how powerful the delivery is and how captivating they make your favorite topics. If they can lock your attention for a small demo course, then chances are that they can reflect the same effect on the entire course.
