Opinions of dental technicians and lecturers on conducting the practical training of studentsin Dental Technician specialty
Information for nursing staff, 2025, 57(2), 7-11.
M. Varneva
Educational Sector “Dental Technician”, Medical College, Medical University – Varna
Abstract. The hours of practical training in the Dental Technician specialty have a very large advantage over the hours of theoretical training. Practical training takes place primarily in an independent medical-technical laboratory or a medical-technical laboratory attached to a medical-dental center and is spread over the entire three-year training period. From 2019, dental technicians in our country have a class organization and by law, all practitioners must be members of the association. The study aims to check if guidelines are followed and students visit only laboratories of members of the Bulgarian Association of Dental Technicians. We seek answers to these questions, with the aim being to present and compare the opinion of the respondents (dental technicians and lecturers) about the process of mentoring during the educational practice and pre-graduate internship of the students in the Dental Technician specialty. To achieve the goal, the following methods were used: documentary, sociological, statistical and graphic analysis to present the results. The object of study are 360 dental technicians from 25 Regional Colleges of the Bulgarian Association of Dental Technicians (BADT) and 18 lecturers from the colleges in Sofia, Varna and Plovdiv (with an Educational Qualification Degree in the “Dental Technician” specialty). The study was carried out during the period 1 September 2020 – 8 February 2021, and the results have not been published until now. SPSS v.20.0. and Jamovi 2.2.1., were used in the processing of the data. The results show that half of the lecturers do not know whether the practical training takes place in the laboratories of BADT members. Managers are more often involved as mentors than salaried employees.
Key words: dental technicians, educators, practical training, study
Address for correspondence: Assoc. Prof. Михаела Варнева, PhD, e-mail: