Tea c h i n g E v i d e n c e - B a s e d

P r a c tic e
Considerations for Dental Education

Robert J. Weyant, MS, DMD, DrPH

KEYWORDS
 Evidence-based dentistry  Dental education  Evidence-based practice

KEY POINTS
 The benefits of providing dentists with evidence-based training are improvements in the
quality of patient care.
 The outcomes of evidence-based training on learning and behavior vary based on the type
of educational programs used.
 Educational research suggests that integrating didactic with clinical educational programs
is important in developing sustained improvements in the use of evidence in clinical
practice.
 Contextual or cultural barriers to adopting evidence must be addressed for successful im-
plementation of new evidence.

INTRODUCTION
Statement of the Problem
The problems that occur when high-quality evidence fails to reach routine clinical
practice was clearly identified by the Institute of Medicine’s review of the US health
care system.1 They identified 3 concerns, which they classified as follows. First,
they reported an overuse of treatments that were known to provide no patient benefit.
Second, they reported an underuse of treatment know to provide benefit. Finally, they
described a misuse of treatment such that care was misapplied to such an extent that
patients failed to benefit fully from treatment. This characterization was referred to as
the “know–do gap,” describing the difference between what is known to work in the
way of beneficial treatment and what is actually done in routine patient care.
The attempt to remedy this problem was, in large part, the motivation behind the
development of evidence-based practice (EBP) efforts in medicine and other health
care professions that evolved from work at McMaster University in the 1990s.2

Disclosure Statement: The author has nothing to disclose.

University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine, 3501 Terrace Street, Pittsburgh, PA
15213, USA
E-mail address: Rjw1@pitt.edu

Dent Clin N Am 63 (2019) 97–117

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cden.2018.08.010 dental.theclinics.com
0011-8532/19/ª 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.