Abstract
BackgroundOral healthcare education for health professional students is important to promote collaborative oral healthcare practice among health professionals. The purpose of this follow-up, cross-sectional study was to investigate attitudes, awareness, and perceptions regarding oral healthcare among dental and nursing students and to compare them both between baseline and the completion of the education programme and between dental and nursing students to identify problems with oral healthcare programmes in dental education.MethodThe subjects included 88 dental and 119 nursing students. The dental students participated in geriatric and preventive dentistry courses for oral healthcare education. The nursing students participated in independent oral healthcare courses comprising 45 h of training with case-based learning and were taught and instructed by multiple health professionals, including dentists. Questionnaires were distributed to the participants to compare attitudes, awareness, and perceptions regarding oral healthcare between baseline and the completion of the education programme and between dental and nursing students. A chi-square test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Mann–Whitney U test were used to compare the data.Result and ConclusionThe data of 48 (28 male and 20 female) dental students and 103 (9 male and 94 female) nursing students who completed the questionnaires both at baseline and after the education programme were used for the comparisons. After the education programme, more than 90% of the students were interested in oral healthcare practice; hoped to practise oral healthcare post-qualification; and perceived oral healthcare to be effective for preventing dental caries, periodontal diseases, and aspiration pneumonia. These attitudes and perceptions were statistically significantly improved after the education. However, the level of awareness of oral healthcare and the level of perception of the importance of collaboration with healthcare workers in oral healthcare practice after education were lower in the dental students than in the nursing students. Multi-professional oral healthcare education with case-based learning has the potential to improve awareness of oral healthcare and perceptions of the importance of collaborative oral healthcare practice.
Highlights
Oral healthcare education for health professional students is important to promote collaborative oral healthcare practice among health professionals
Result and Conclusion: The data of 48 (28 male and 20 female) dental students and 103 (9 male and 94 female) nursing students who completed the questionnaires both at baseline and after the education programme were used for the comparisons
More than 90% of the students were interested in oral healthcare practice; hoped to practise oral healthcare post-qualification; and perceived oral healthcare to be effective for preventing dental caries, periodontal diseases, and aspiration pneumonia
Summary
Oral healthcare education for health professional students is important to promote collaborative oral healthcare practice among health professionals. To promote collaborative oral healthcare in these contexts, oral healthcare education is needed for both oral health professionals and other health professionals, such as nurses, physicians, certified speech-hearing therapists, and certified care workers [15]. Oral health professionals have tried to address these problems and have reported that multi-professional education is effective in improving attitudes and perceptions regarding oral healthcare among health professional students [21,22,23,24,25,26]. One study reported that a total of 45-h oral healthcare courses with case-based learning conducted by multiple professionals were effective in improving attitudes towards oral healthcare among nursing students and that almost all of the students hoped to practice collaborative oral healthcare post-qualification [26]
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