Evaluation of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices about Paediatric Dental Apps among Paediatric Dentists in India: A Questionnairebased, Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Dental anxiety is of prime concern for the paediatric dentist as it can prevent a child from seeking effective dental care by creating conditions that are challenging to the paediatric dentists and thereby not allowing to render the highest quality care. The dental application (apps) can be a useful tool in alleviating the anxiety in children, but these apps have not yet been evaluated for its use by paediatric dentists. Aim: To assess knowledge, attitude and practices about paediatric dental apps among paediatric dentists in India. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional questionnairebased study was conducted among 450 paediatric dentists in India. The study was conducted over a span of one month. A 16-item validated questionnaire with Cronbach's alpha coefficient value of 0.82, containing professional demographic data, knowledge, attitude, and practices about dental apps were distributed among the participants. The collected data was subjected to descriptive analysis was done using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software (version 20.0 Chicago IL, USA). Results: The study included (N=370) out of which 159 (42.97%) were female respondents and 211 (57.03%) were male respondents. The mean age of the surveyed professionals was 34.14±9.11 years. The results showed that the correlation between knowledge and attitude was found to be highly statistically significant (p=0.0001) however, no statistically significant results were found when a comparison was made between knowledge and practices (p-value=0.7684) and also attitude and practices (p-value=0.0930). Conclusion: The study concludes that, there is a need for creating awareness about the use of dental apps as an adjunct with conventional behaviour modification techniques among paediatric dentists in our country.