INSIGHTS INTO COMMUNICATION IN DENTAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE: A NARRATIVE REVIEW

Background: Effective communication increases dental patients’ satisfaction and improves treatment results. Despite its importance in dental curricula, there is often a gap between the theoretical aspects of communication skills and the practical application in real-world dental settings. This research aims to explore the key components of effective dentist-patient communication and address teaching, learning, and assessment of communication skills within undergraduate dental education with a specific focus on the Armenian context. Materials and Methods: Literary research was conducted across internet bibliographic open-access sources. The narrative review included 91 publications, comprising 67 full-text articles, 3 reports, 13 monographs and books, 5 guidelines, 3 legal acts. Databases such as Medline, Scopus, Web of Sciences, PubMed, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate and others were used. This paper presents the key findings of a literature review encompassing publications on communication skills in the field of dentistry and dental education, without constraints on publication dates. In preliminary search 142 titles and abstracts were screened and 91 publications were selected based on their high methodological quality and in alignment with the authors’ conceptual approaches. Results: In dental practice, communication is equally critical, reflecting the personal values and interpersonal skills of dental professionals. Many dental professionals underestimate the challenges of maintaining clear communication in a demanding health care system. Communication can take various forms. In modern dental education, various methods are used to train communication skills, including lectures, role-playing, small group teaching simulated patient interactions, clinical observation, real patient interviews, virtual patients and virtual reality-based trainings, use of videos, chairside teaching and feedback sessions. Traditional assessment tools may not capture the full scope of a student’s communication skills. An assessment system should be designed to comprehensively evaluate the students’ ability to integrate and apply their knowledge, skills and attitudes in real-world clinical settings, reflecting their readiness for professional practice. Conclusions: There is no ideal method for training communication skills in undergraduate dental education. Combining the most effective teaching, learning and assessment approaches can help to design a structured communication skills curriculum. Students’ communication competencies should be assessed through real-life scenarios with the use of structured frameworks and check-lists to ensure their readiness for professional practice.