Teaching occlusal sealant therapy to dental students Department of Children's Dentistry, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The use of sealants has been taught from its inception by the Department of Children's Dentistry at Stony Brook. The average student, during his two years of clinical experience, applies approximately 50 sealants. Estimating that each sealant takes about 20 minutes to apply (probably a realistic figure considering preparation time, and the fact that the students are inexperienced and usually working without assistants), about 17 hours, or six percent of a student's clinic time in Children's Dentistry, is spent placing sealants. In addition the students have reading assignments and four contact hours of lectures and a clinical class exercise in sealant therapy. We have found that the six and 12-month retention of sealants by our dental students is comparable to that reported by others in which the sealant was applied by dentists or specially trained auxiliaries. This is due, in part, to a policy of having faculty deliberately try to pry off the sealant before the patient is dismissed. (This procedure, we feel, should also be done by the practicing dentist). Our studies have also found that dental students have more success when they use an autopolymerized system and when rubber dam isolation is used while working with a UV-polymerized system. Despite our didactic and clinical class exercise program, our students still commit common errors in sealant placement that requires the vigilance of our faculty to both detect and correct. Although the number of individuals contacted was small, it was gratifying to find that all of our graduates, who were able to, used sealants in their practices.