The reception of digital stories in dental education: Triggering thinking skills for empathy in undergraduate dentistry students

The use of Digital Storytelling Workshops and the digital stories as an end product has been an important asset for health communication, both for raising awareness about particular health issues and the interpersonal aspects in health service presentation. Relying on the qualitative data collected through a reception survey completed by 65 undergraduate dentistry students, in the context of the health communication course in Hacettepe University, a public university in Turkey, this paper examines the reception of digital stories that were created by patients with cleft-lip and palate and craniomaxillofacial deformities, their parents and doctors in a digital storytelling workshop. This qualitative study has shown that the use of patients', their parents' and their doctors' digital stories cleft-lip and palate and craniomaxillofacial deformities has helped the undergraduate dentistry students to develop an insight about their professional roles as well as connecting their theoretical knowledge of a health condition with the lived experiences by patients, patients' parents and their doctors.