Dr Lauren Stow

Available projects:

PROJECT 1

Title: Stress as a Barrier to Optimal Clinical Performance in Third-Year Dental Students

Description of broader project: This study will identify and assist “at-risk” dental students who develop high anxiety/stress during their early exposure to clinical practice. These conditions can seriously impact academic and clinical performance, as well as a student’s duty of care to patients.

The study will utilise existing and additional stress management interventions both before and after clinic activities, as a way to promote effective completion of the dental training program.

This will involve measuring self-reported stress (indexed by a questionnaire) and physiological stress response (indexed by heart rate, heart rate variability and electrocardiogram, or ECG) as a baseline for each individual and then in real-life clinical situations experienced by third year undergraduate dental students in the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) program at the University of Adelaide.

An intervention will also be trialled to reduce anxiety, improve wellbeing and better equip students during their careers as dental practitioners.

Specific aims:

1)    Use student focus groups and surveys to gain perceptions of anxiety during the early weeks of clinical practice in BDS3.

2)    Identify high and low anxiety students and compare stress levels during clinic exposure.

3)   Develop and trial an intervention for students to reduce anxiety and improve clinic performance.

Description of specific student role: Student involvement would be part of a broader research project involving staff from dentistry, health and medical sciences, and psychology. The overarching aim of the research is to better equip current dental students with skills to manage both short- and long-term clinical stress during their training and career as dental practitioners. This project will use self-report and physiological data related to stress. While a dental student is welcome to be involved in multiple facets of the project, for a thesis it is anticipated that a student would use both qualitative research methods (surveys) to gain information about dental students’ perceptions of stressors in clinical practice and their current stress management strategies, as well as quantitative analysis of de-identified physiological data.

Project Available for: Honours, Masters, PhD

Commencing: Semester 1 2020

Special Requirements: Nil