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Community Dental Health

Cover Date:

December 2006

Print ISSN:

0265 539X

Vol:

23

Issue:

4

Editorial

BASCD conferences, held twice yearly, use interpersonal and mass communication, and aim to help us to become better informed and inspired to improve our management, research and clinical skills. These are memorable and enjoyable, though costly events in our calendars. In recent years the cost to members for each day’s attendance has been approximately £100; this excludes accommodation. Assuming the overall costs for a two-day conference are £300, this will take up the annual training budget for many members. Although we cannot put a price on renewing acquaintances and making new friends, can we measure the outcomes of mass communication? In this respect, “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, cannot express it in numbers your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” (Kelvin, 1891). The need to measure outcome, compare it with the aim and then re-allocate resources appropriately becomes more and more urgent as fiscal pressures rise. How to put guidelines into practice prompted the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in November 2005 to commission BMJ Learning (Walsh, 2006) to produce a series of learning modules based on its guidance on a number of topics. An audit tool has therefore been added to BMJ Learning, enabling a participant to assess ‘how you cared for patients before doing the module and how you cared for them afterwards, and the main changes that completing the module has made to your practice’. A chief medical officer has said, “Perhaps more could be achieved in health by improving communication than almost any other factor. This includes communication between the professional and the patient, between professionals and with the public.” (Calman, 1996). Our purpose is to ask if, at scientific conferences like BASCD’s, audit tools are needed so that communication could, if necessary be improved. Presently we know little about the effectiveness of conferences in changing for the better the knowledge, opinion, attitude or behaviour of the attendees. a fundamental biological process: it is the basis of all learning, of ‘profiting from experience,’ of ‘learning from mistakes’”. Audit of conferences’ successes is thus presently ‘of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind’. To put matters more bluntly: is there evidence that a particular conference and its constituent presentations have been of a sufficient quality to justify allowing attendees to count attendance towards their verifiable continuing professional development hours? Surely it is only by use of evidence based - i.e. measured - feedback that we can claim the resources of a conference have been well spent.

Conference presentations
P r e s e n t e r s at scientific conferences incorporate an evidence-based message, show an understanding of the social and psychological factors required to make up their presentation, and use visual and/or spoken means to deliver it. If we take for granted that a conventional presentation’s (basic) scientific message is sound, what of the quality of its other content? A model of mass communication suggests how to maximise a presentation’s power to get its message across to the audience. (McQuail and Windahl, 1993).

Mass communication model
A communication progresses from a source, to a (factually correct and evidence-based) message, to a communicator, a channel (medium), and a receiver. A final task is to find out if the message has indeed been received and, more importantly in health services, has it goaded the recipient to make an appropriate change. The communicator and receiver jointly choose a medium for the message, in this case a conference. The better the communicator understands the nature of the audience for the message, the more effective is the chosen medium. The message may be enriched or handicapped by the medium and its effectiveness may be enhanced or spoiled by the communicator’s self image and personality. A ‘personality’ may overcome constraints in promoting an advanced technique, a new procedure or a fresh idea - they have been called ‘champions’. The audience’s image of the communicator may therefore be highly relevant. However, the audience is likely to be heterogeneous and anonymous, and the communicator’s image of the audience poor. Allowance for this problem can be made by arranging the way the content is conveyed so that it will become ‘owned’ by the recipients, and by recognising the communication potential of individuals. This potential incorporates the characteristics and resources that enable people to give and absorb information, for example sight, speech and knowledge of other languages; social position defined by

Conference agendas
Influences on the community’s dental health change continually and BASCD conferences help highlight these changes to its members. Previous attendance figures affect their make up and data from questionnaire evaluations in earlier years might also play a part. However, such valuable data is not used to find out if it has stimulated change by attendees, even though it may be an individual presenter’s unspoken aim or that of the conference itself. In the context of audit of patient care, McIntyre and Popper (1983) wrote: “The value of ‘feedback’ in the modification of behaviour cannot be doubted. It is

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Articles from this issue

• Title
• Pg. Start
• Pg. End

1. Editorial
2. 194
3. 196

1. Caries prevalence in 12-year-old children from Germany. Results of the 2004 national survey
2. 197
3. 202

1. The relationship between prevalence and incidence of dental caries. Some observational consequences.
2. 203
3. 208

1. Characteristics attributed to individuals with dental fluorosis
2. 209
3. 216

1. DIAGNOdent - an adjunctive diagnostic method for caries diagnosis in epidemiology
2. 217
3. 221

1. Prevalence and factors associated with traumatic dental injuries (TDI) to anterior teeth of 11-13 year old Thai children
2. 222
3. 227

1. Performance indicators used to assess the quality of primary dental care
2. 228
3. 235

1. A survey of school dental screening practise in community dental services of England and Wales in 2003
2. 236
3. 238

1. The prevalence and pattern of hypodontia of the permanent teeth and crown size and shape deformity affecting upper lateral incisors in a sample of Jordanian dental patients.
2. 239
3. 243

1. Relationship between dental caries experience (DMFS) and dental fluorosis in 12-year-old Puerto Ricans.
2. 244
3. 250

1. Prevalence of dental caries in obese and normal-weight Brazilian adolescents attending state and private schools.
2. 251
3. 253

1. Abstracts
2. 254
3. 254