Iranian Dental Students’ Distress Level and Attitude towards Their Professional Future following the Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is transmitted through saliva and respiratory aerosols. Concerns among dental clinicians over cross-contamination are among the main challenges currently present in the dental profession. This study aimed to assess dental students’ distress level and attitude towards their professional future following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials & Methods: This descriptive study was carried out recruiting 369 dental students of the Guilan University of Medical Sciences (a census sampling method) using an online questionnaire consisted of the three main topics of students’ academic status, distress level, and attitude towards their professional future. The students received the link to the questionnaire via instant messaging applications. The Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal-Wallis test, the Spearman’s correlation, the chi-squared test, the Fisher’s exact test, the binomial test, as well as the backward multiple logistic regression model were used for data analysis. Results: The dental students had a low level of distress and a negative attitude towards their professional future. Accordingly, the distress level was significantly higher in females (P < 0.001) than in males. Besides, it had a positive correlation with the academic level. In addition, the attitude of the females and those attending the Rasht Dental School was more significantly negative than that of the males and those attending the Anzali Private Dental School (P = 0.01 and P = 0.009, respectively). Furthermore, attitude had a positive correlation with distress. Conclusion: The subjects showed little distress over the pandemic. However, this level of distress showed a significant correlation with the negative attitude towards the professional future. In fact, this negative attitude stemmed from structural changes in the dental profession as well as the threats posed to financial conditions following the transmission of the disease and concerns over it.