A randomised controlled trial of the effect of outreach placement on treatment planning by dental students

Undergraduate dental students' curricula are being supplemented with primary care placements. To compare the effect of outreach placement and traditional hospital-based training alone on students' treatment planning ability. Randomised controlled trial.Setting Four existing primary care placements in England during 2004. At follow-up the fourth-year students took a history from a standard 'patient' then recorded a treatment plan. Interview skill was scored. The history and plan were assessed by clinicians blind to the intervention. Five-week block outreach placements for 25 of 49 students. Interviewing skill, quality of dental and social histories, the appropriateness of planned treatments and the consideration of wider issues. The two groups were similar in the scores for interviewing and taking a dental history. The outreach group scored higher for capturing a social history (outreach mean 4.4, SD = 2.1, n = 22 and hospital 2.8, SD = 1.9, n = 23; p = 0.01) and for developing an appropriate treatment plan (5.6 [SD = 2.1] and 3.9 [SD = 2.3]; p = 0.01). There were no differences in scores relating to the wider issues. Dental outreach training was significantly more effective than traditional training alone in improving students' ability to capture relevant points of social history from a patient and to consider them when planning treatment.