Battle of the Bonds: Training's Impact on Dental Adhesive Use in Undergraduate and Continuing Education.

PURPOSE: To evaluate whether single-day, gamified training (called 'Battle of the Bonds') improves operators' immediate macro dentin shear bond strength (SBS) values and perceived learning in undergraduate and continuing dental education about dental adhesives, composite resin, and light-curing units. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In July 2025, 14 dentists and 21 final-year students performed four macro-SBS tests before and eleven after lectures on adhesive systems, composite selection, and light-curing. SBS was measured on human dentin for each participant's routine adhesive and representatives of all actual adhesive/generation families (from three-step etch-and-rinse to universal adhesives). Post-course satisfaction was measured using a 13-item Likert questionnaire (ranging from 1 to 5). Paired and independent t-tests were used to compare the SBS (α = 0.05). RESULTS: The baseline SBS with the participants' own adhesive was similar between the dentists and the students (12.5 ± 6.4 MPa vs 13.1 ± 6.6 MPa, P = 0.68). After training, the mean SBS with the participants' own adhesive significantly increased to 18.5 ± 6.3 MPa for the dentists (+67%) and to 17.3 ± 6.0 MPa for the students (+27%) (both P 0.05). Satisfaction with training and perceived knowledge gains were very high (4.9 ± 0.5 for dentists and 4.9 ± 0.3 for students). CONCLUSIONS: A single-day, competition-based curriculum that couples concise lectures with hands-on SBS testing yields rapid, clinically meaningful improvements and strong engagement across predoctoral and practitioner audiences. This experiential format may help standardize technique-sensitive restorative skills in dental education.