onlincourse

Brain, Behaviour, and Dentistry

Improve your patient care as you learn to navigate the behaviour and brain functions commonly associated with dental treatment with this online course from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.

Duration

4 weeks

Weekly study

2 hours

100% online

How it works

Unlimited subscription

Learn more

Gain an understanding of patient behaviour in a dental practice

Dental professionals face many challenges in the workplace, with patient behaviour being one of the more complex issues to deal with.

On this four-week course from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, you’ll gain knowledge of the brain functions and behaviour associated with the experience of dental patients to help improve your care.

You’ll explore basic brain science concepts and learn how to use this knowledge to enhance your dental practice with better pain and anxiety management, and treatment planning.

Explore the role of memory in dental treatment

You’ll delve into the key concepts of memory formation and explore research to understand the issues of memory with dental patients.

With this knowledge, you’ll identify the role that memory plays in a dental practice, and how you can apply your learning to your own workplace.

Unpack the issues surrounding dental anxiety

It is common for dental patients to experience anxiety. Therefore, knowing how to manage this is extremely important in your practice.

You’ll explore the emotions associated with dentistry including fear, anxiety, anger, and frustration and learn the best practices for navigating them.

Understand how dental professionals deal with patient decision-making

On the final part of the course, you’ll focus on the motivation and decision-making of dental patients to help you further understand the actions of your patients.

You’ll delve deeper into decision-making as you unpack factors such as risk and cognitive bias to help develop a comprehensive understanding of the behaviour of dental patients. By the end of the course, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to improve patient care in your dental practice.

Week 1
Dentistry and Attention
- Association between brain, behavior, and dentistry
  In this learning activity, we will talk about some basic concepts in brain science and why it is important to dentists.
- Perception
  In this learning activity, we will explore the issues of perception and attention, and some clinical implications in dental practice.
- Attention
  In this learning activity, we will learn to define key concepts about attention and recognize the importance of multisensory integration in oral functions.
Week 2
Dentistry and Memory
- Basic concepts of memory
  In this learning activity, we will focus on the issues of memory of dental patients. You will learn to identify the key concepts of memory formation and the major methods of memory research.
- Memory systems
  In this learning activity, we will explore the issues of memory of dental patients.
- Memory and dental practice
  So far, we discuss the concept of memory. What kinds of role does memory play in dental practice?
Week 3
Dentistry and Emotion
- Basic concepts of emotion
  Welcome back. This week we will focus on emotion, which is an interesting topic. Speaking of emotion, what do you imagine in dental practice? We hope that the concepts are helpful to you after these sessions.
- Fear and anxiety
  In the previous activity, we discussed threat-related experience, such as fear and anxiety. Let's focus on these two topics, and discuss some "catastrophized cases."
- Anger and emotion of social interaction
  Speaking of negative emotions, we should not forget a major kind of ‘dark feeling’ from patients, i.e., anger and frustration. In this session, we will focus on them.
Week 4
Dentistry and Decision making
- Basic concepts of decision-making
  In the session, we will focus on the issues of motivation and decision-making of dental patients. After this class, you will learn some basic concepts regarding motivation and reward.
- Risk and decision-making
  In this part, you will learn the concepts of risk and recognize the theoretical framework of decision-making under risk.
- Factors related to decision-making
  In the last session, you will learn to identify the factors related to decision-making, to distinguish the common cognitive bias and heuristics, and to recognize the association between emotion and decision-making.