Evaluation of Dental Students’ Awareness and Attitude about Preventive Dental Treatments: Survey Research

Abstract

Purpose: Determination of dental students’ approaches to őssure sealant applications; the widespread use and evaluation of their effectiveness of protective dental practices is extremely important. This study aims to evaluate the level of understanding and clinical attitudes of 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students of Necmettin Erbakan University, Faculty of Dentistry on preventive dental treatments. Methods: The őrst part of the questionnaire consists of 10 questions assessing the students’ technical levels of knowledge with data on age, gender and educational level. In the second section analyzing students’ clinical behaviors, 11 questions were asked for answers tomultiple choices (always, often, sometimes, never). This questionnaire was used on the internet in an anonymous way. For statistical analyses, the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, US) software was used. Results: TThe questionnaire was received by 68 3rd grade, 67 4th grade and 75 5th grade students who were previously educated on őssure sealant applications. The vast majority (96.2 percent) of the students involved in the study indicated that the effectiveness of őssure sealants in preventing the development of tooth decay was conőrmed by strong scientiőc evidence. Again, 99.5 percent of the students participating in the study indicated that the justiőcation of the application procedures for the őssure sealant was identiőed and understood. With the assumption that only new teeth can be applied to őssure sealants, a statistically signiőcant difference between the classes was observed (p