The Evaluation of Preclinical Dentistry Students' Perspectives Towards Disabled Individuals Before Clinical Internship Training

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the perspectives of preclinical dentistry students (1st, 2nd and 3rd year) towards disabled individuals before starting their clinical internship training. Methods: Our study was planned on 217 preclinical dentistry students studying at a dentistry faculty in Turkey. Survey form: It consists of 46 questions in total, including 6 questions that introduce students and 40 questions that constitute the Attitude Scale towards People Affected by Disabilities. The questions were directed to students in the Fall semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. For the analysis of the study; Power analysis, Frequency analysis, Normality test (Shapiro-Wilk), Independent T test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey test were used. The significance level was accepted as α=0.05. Results: 179 students; 111 females and 68 males participated in the study. The participation rate was found to be 82.49%. With the perspectives of preclinical dentistry students towards disabled individuals; there wasn’t significant difference in terms of their gender (p>0.05), education level (p>0.05), attendance at any training/seminar on disabled individuals (p>0.05), presence of a disabled individual among their acquaintances (p>0.05) and living in the same house with a disabled individual (p>0.05). However, a statistical difference was detected in terms of the frequency of meeting with disabled individuals (p