Assessment of Dental Service Provided by Undergraduate Dental Students in Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya

Patient satisfaction can be used as one of the indicator for measuring quality of dental care provided. The objective of this study was to assess patient experiences with dental service provided by undergraduate dental students in Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya. A cross sectional study was done by distributing a self-answered questionnaire to patients treated by undergraduate dental students. Patient level of satisfaction was assessed by using five point Likert-like scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree and strongly agree), with a list of items divided into three domains, consist of interpersonal skills, dental treatment and services. The response rate was 71.3%. The mean satisfaction scores were 83.09%, 78.62 and 74.16 for interpersonal skills, dental treatment and services domains respectively and the overall mean satisfaction score was highly satisfactory (78.62%). The percentage of satisfied patients was 82.4%, 66.2% and 55.4% for interpersonal skills, dental treatment and services domains respectively. There was significant association between satisfaction score with age (p-value= 0.001), treatment received by examination and diagnosis (p-value=0.027), denture treatment (p-value=0.032), others treatment (p-value=0.043) and ‘year of study’ of the students (p-value=0.001). Patients were satisfied with their overall experiences while receiving dental care provided by undergraduate dental students. They were highly satisfied with the students’ interpersonal skills, dental treatment received and services provided at the undergraduate dental clinics.