Dental students’ knowledge about emergency management of dental trauma

Background and Aim: Proper and immediate management of traumatic dental injuries depends highly on dentists’ knowledge. The aim of this study was to evaluate knowledge of dentistry students at universities of Tehran about managing traumatic dental injuries. Materials and Methods: The participants of this cross-sectional study were senior year students at dental faculties of four universities of Tehran, Iran (Tehran University, Islamic Azad University, Shahed University and Shahid Beheshti University) in 94-95 (2016). In this study, anonymous questionnaires were distributed among students; the content of these questionnaires were obtained from previous standardized ones, and were re-evaluated. The questionnaire was consisted of questions regarding background information (5 questions), traumatic dental injuries (TDI) treatment history (2 questions), and knowledge questions (10 items). Class attendance records were obtained from educational assistants of these four universities in order to distribute questionnaires. After the questionnaires were filled, the answers were scored and the results were analyzed using descriptive tables and linear regression model in SPSS software. Results: In this study 66 male students (45.20%) and 80 female students (54.79%) filled the questionnaires which made a total number of 146 participants. The highest grade point average (GPA) for the participants was 19 and the lowest was 12. The answers to TDI knowledge were scored on a scale of 0-12. Participants mean score was 5.48 (SD= 2.3) for TDI knowledge section (of 12). Students of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti University had answered the questions better. Marriage status and trauma treatment experience, gender and age were not significantly associated with the scores for TDI knowledge. Conclusions: The low percentage of correct answers to the questions indicates the need to improve the information of the students. Novel student-centered teaching methods are necessary to provide an effective learning process for TDI treatment.