Children with autism

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Children with autism : helping children with autism and their carers access and cope with dental care. How to think smarter about people who think differently.

Welcome

Welcome to this blended learning course for Dental Core Trainee's (DCTs) on providing quality dental care for children with autism. The focus is on helping children with autism and their carers access and cope with dental care and how to think smarter about people who think differently.

Here you will find the course learning outcomes as well as instructions and resources to explore the delivery of quality dental care for autistic children. This blended course content comprises; pre-reading resources, group work and a live interactive session.

Certain links on this page are accessible only to those within the predefined DCT1 learning group for the relevant Public Dental service (PDS) training cohort. Please contact the team email  if you have any queries about this.   

Aim and learning outcomes
Child dressed in a pink top and denim skirt sits on a red plastic chair at a table with her back to the camera. On the table, to the right, is a pile of paper and assessment toys. In the child's hand is yellow string and in front of her is a piece of pink paper, jigsaw pieces and a yellow and red pencil.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this blended course you should be able to:

  • Define autism in its variety of presentations and know about the previous classifications and terminology. 

  • Analyze video resources and case-based resources to deepen insight into some of the challenges autistic children and their families may face in the dental environment. 

  • Develop a toolbox of strategies for your dental team to overcome these challenges. 

  • Add to a stock of resources (story boards, communication tools, pre-visit questionnaires, online resources) to help to communicate effectively with autistic children and their families. 

Aims

This course aims to develop the DCTs insight and awareness of the challenges of providing dental care for children with autism.

The course will introduce and develop strategies which help children with autism and their families to access and cope with dental care. 

decorative Mulit-coloured stack of interconnecting red, blue, green and yellow play bricks

Development Outcomes:

1) (A) Effective Communication

2) (C) Knowledge & Skills Development

3) (D) Maintaining Patient Confidence

Presenter introduction

Introduction video 

Guy Jackson, BDS DPDS MSc PGCert (clinical pedagogy)

Senior PDS dentist NHS Highland, Assistant Clinical Dental Director: NHS Highland

Tutor: BSc and MSc Oral Health Sciences (University of the Highlands and Islands)

Hon clinical lecturer (Edinburgh Dental Institute online MSc in restorative dentistry)

Course reading

Please read the following web material prior to our live session, it will greatly increase your knowledge and understanding prior to our discussion on the day.  Information from these resources will be discussed in further detail at the live session.

Links to National Autistic Website:

Cropped face of a young boy with a pained expression on face, holding hands to ears
Groupwork

In your allocated groups meet to plan how you will divide up the task and tackle the exercises.

  • Which group am I in? Please see the teams channel for allocated group work. 

Be prepared as a group or by nominating a spokesperson or persons to give a 5 minute summary of your groupwork task. This can be with or without a PowerPoint presentation and will be followed by 5 minutes discussion. 

If you have any problems accessing the teams channel, please contact stacey.findlay2@nhs.scot.