Abstract
Aims: To evaluate Hong Kong dental students’ perceived awareness, preparedness and barriers towards managing tobacco-using patients. Methods: A validated questionnaire was administered to dental students who were in their clinical years (the third, fourth, fifth and sixth year of study) in 2017 at the University of Hong Kong. The questionnaire consisted of three sections: (1) awareness towards practicing tobacco cessation counselling (TCC), (2) preparedness in terms of confidence, knowledge and clinical practices when managing tobacco-using patients, and (3) perceived barriers to counselling. Results: All 206 invited students had participated this study. Most (93%) agreed that dentists should deliver TCC. However, only around a quarter (26%) of students were well-prepared to help patients in tobacco cessation. While 60% of students agreed nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) was helpful for patients to quit tobacco use, only 28% understood its mechanism of action, and merely 16% were knowledgeable enough to introduce NRT to their patients. Two-thirds (62%) of students felt they did not have sufficient skills at this stage of their training. Conclusions: Most Hong Kong dental students had good awareness that dental professionals had an important role to promote tobacco cessation in their patient pools. However, not many of them were well-prepared to manage tobacco-using patients. Common barriers were found to be patients’ apathy and students’ inadequate familiarity with NRT.
Highlights
Tobacco use is responsible for six million deaths annually in the world [1]
As for dentists, it was reported that only 38% of them had assisted patients in tobacco cessation [27]. These results showed the situation in Hong Kong was worse than the situation in United Kingdom (UK), where 68% of the UK dentists and 75% of Northern Irish dentists felt obligated to provide tobacco cessation services and provided information on tobacco cessation for their patients [28,29]
The questionnaire consisted of three main sections: awareness towards practicing tobacco cessation counselling (TCC), and preparedness in term of confidence, knowledge and clinical practices when managing tobacco-using patients, and perceived barriers to counselling
Summary
Tobacco use is responsible for six million deaths annually in the world [1]. these deaths are entirely preventable. Many studies showed that even brief or simple counselling provided by health professionals could substantially boost the quit rates of tobacco-using patients [17,18,19,20,21]. Dentists were reported to be ‘uniquely and advantageously positioned’ to provide tobacco cessation counselling (TCC) [22]. Researchers have found that 59% of the patients who attend a dental clinic expected the dentists to provide tobacco-cessation services regularly [23]. Hong Kong dental students’ attitude and practices towards tobacco cessation for their patients. The aim of this study is to evaluate Hong Kong dental students’ awareness, preparedness and perceived barriers towards managing tobacco-using patients, and to compare the responses between students in different years of their study. The null hypothesis was there would be no difference of awareness, preparedness and perceived barriers towards managing tobacco-using patients between students at different years of their dental study
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