Journal of Medical Education Development

en Learner-centered SNAPPS model and its impact on diagnostic thinking among dental students آموزش پزشکی Medical Education پژوهشي اصیل Orginal Research Background & Objectives: Diagnostic thinking is a core skill for accurate diagnosis and treatment and is essential for all medical students. This study aimed to investigate the impact of learner-centered education using the Student-centered, Narrow, Analyze, Probe, Plan, Select (SNAPPS) approach on the diagnostic thinking skills of dental students. Materials & Methods: This pretest–posttest quasi-experimental study was conducted on 49 dental students in the second semester of the 2022–2023 academic year, after obtaining informed consent. Students’ diagnostic thinking was assessed before the educational intervention using Bordage’s standard Diagnostic Thinking Inventory (DTI). Then, students were trained using the SNAPPS clinical teaching method and re-evaluated with the same questionnaire. Data were analyzed using paired t-test in SPSS (version 26). Results: 59.2% of the students were male, 87.8% were single, and 73.5% were non-native. The mean ± standard deviation of the participants' age was 25.04 ± 3.56 years. The mean ± standard deviation of flexibility in thinking increased from 76.89 ± 10.54 before the intervention to 84.16 ± 10.77 after the intervention (p < 0.001). The mean ± standard deviation of structure of knowledge in memory increased from 67.78 ± 8.77 to 71.02 ± 9.89 (p = 0.024). The mean ± standard deviation of the total DTI score increased from 145.45 ± 16.89 to 155.77 ± 18.35 (p = 0.001). The effect size (Cohen's d = 0.522) indicated a medium effect according to Cohen's classification. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that the use of the SNAPPS model was associated with improvements in students' diagnostic thinking, including flexibility in thinking and structure of knowledge in memory.   education, dental, clinical reasoning, problem based learning, students, dental, SNAPPS model 0 0 http://edujournal.zums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-12-852-5&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Robab Noormohammadi robab.noormohammadi@yahoo.com 5300319475328460038536 5300319475328460038536 No Assistant Professor, Department of Oral Diseases, School of Dentistry, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran Sevda Mirzazadeh drsevdamirzazadeh70@gmail.co 5300319475328460038537 5300319475328460038537 No Dental Student, School of Dentistry, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan Mohammadhossein Mirsiahi miry.mohammad@gmail.com 5300319475328460038538 5300319475328460038538 No General dentist, Zanjan Dental School Faculty, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran Kamyar Mansori Kamyarmansori@zums.ac.ir 5300319475328460038539 5300319475328460038539 No Assistant Professor, Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran Azin Nourian azin.nourian@gmail.com 5300319475328460038540 5300319475328460038540 Yes Associate Professor, Department of Orthodontics, School of Dentistry, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran