STUDENTʼS INDEPENDENT WORK AS THE BASIS OF EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE DENTIST

Abstract

In the conditions of growing competition in the market of educational services, the leading factor influencing the development of higher medical education in Ukraine is the improvement of the quality of doctors’ training. Its main task is to train professionals who can compete successfully in the domestic and European services market. Integration into the European scientific and educational space encourages the introduction of the latest norms and standards in the educational process of Ukraine and orients higher education institutions to a highly motivated person seeking self-development, able to replenish and update knowledge, search for additional material, creative approach to learning tasks.

Increasing the share of independent work of students has become a key element in the development and improvement of the quality of modern higher medical education and indicates a departure from the passive ideology of learning (“let me be taughtˮ). To implement better standards of educational activities, such a reorganization allows to prepare a future doctor who is capable of professional growth, has a sense of social and corporate responsibility, is able to make decisions in difficult life and industrial cases and is competitive in the domestic and European services market.

To ensure the quality of students’ performance of the set tasks: extracurricular, classroom, creative independent work and the maximum improvement of their motivation at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University implemented and actively practiced one of the interactive teaching methods - the case method. This method of analysis of a real clinical case reveals and forms in the future doctor analytical abilities, accumulation of practical experience, independence in decision-making, communication, skills of work with a sufficiently large amount of information. The formation of clinical thinking in dental students takes place in the process of direct independent attempt to solve a specific clinical situation. Thus, consideration and discussion of situational tasks stimulates individual activity of students, forms the development of diligence and creativity, willingness to take responsibility for the results of their own learning, allows students to cooperate theoretical training and transform it into practical skills necessary for future professional activity.