An investigation on the rate of communication skills among dental students from patients’ point of view in Kerman dental school, Iran, in 2016

BACKGROUND and AIM: The patient's viewpoint on prevention, healthy diet, and disease recovery clearly relates to the relationship between the therapist and the patient. In this research, the importance of communication techniques between the patients and the dentists are investigated in order to improve the level of functional knowledge of patients for observing the oral hygiene and carrying out the activities in the field of dental diseases prevention and treatment. METHODS: In this study, the patients who had received dental treatment were interviewed by a dental student at a general or specialized department in one of the clinical departments and then a questionnaire was completed for each patient. Later on for measuring the data, SPSS software was used. P < 0.0500 was considered statistically significant. The collected data were analyzed by t-test, chi-square test, and logestic regression. RESULTS: In this cross-sectional study, 276 patients were studied along with a number of students who were enrolled. Of 276 patients, 46.4% were men and 53.6% were women. The dental students were 53.6% men and 46.4% women, 79.3% were general dentists and 20.7% were specialists. The average score for answering the aforementioned questionnaire was 18.30 ± 1.91 out of 20. This score had a significant relationship with students' age (P = 0.0001), but did not have a significant relationship with the gender of the students (P = 0.2700) or that of patients (P = 0.5600). CONCLUSION: By increasing the age of the therapists, regarding the viewpoint of the patients, the communication skills were used more effectively, but the use of communication skills was not affected by the therapists’ or patients’ gender.