Azhar S, Yazdanie N.
Oral – systemic paradigm: assessing medical students’ knowledge, attitude and practice of dentistry.
Biomedica Jan ;32(1):1-7.

Background and Objectives: Oral health remains one of the longstanding health challenges. Traditional medical curricula do not focus on oral health care and prevention resulting in misperceptions and limited understanding among medical students. Methods: This study compared a total of 2412 medical and non-medical students for their oral health knowledge, attitudes and practices including tobacco use. It achieved a response rate above 95% on self – reported questionnaire. Results: About 22% participants undertook annual dental checkups regularly while 77% cited satisfactory oral health as a reason for not needing to visit a dentist. Logistic regression results showed slightly better compliance among non-medical students with pre-defined oral self – care regime while adjusting for other predictors, as indicated by more frequent daily tooth – brushing (OR 0.79, 95% CI 0.66 – 0.94, p < 0.05). However, medical students had comparatively better awareness and positive oral health self – perceptions (OR 1.29, 1.07 – 1.54, p < 0.01), were less likely to experience dental fear (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.53 – 0.82, p < 0.0001), and were more receptive towards oral – systemic perspective (OR 1.73, 95% CI 1.37 – 2.19, p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Medical education should incorporate oral health competencies to foster a culture of multidisciplinarity with corresponding reconfiguration of national health system.

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