A SURVEY ON ORAL HEALTH BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDE AMONG DENTAL, PHYSIOTHERAPY AND PHARMACY STUDENTS

  • Benish Mehmood BDS, MDPS (University of Sheffield), UK Assistant Professor & Head, Department of Community & Preventive Dentistry Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi
  • Faisal Jahangir BDS, MSc, Oral Medicine (UCL, UK) Assistant Professor, Department of Oral Medicine Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi
  • Muhammad Kaleem BDS, MCPS (CPSP), Head of Department/ Assistant Professor, Department of Perodontology, Armed Forces Institute of Dentistry, Rawalpindi
  • Mehreen Riaz Faisal BDS, MDPH, (Queen Marry, University of London) Assistant Professor, Department of Community & Preventive Dentistry, Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi
  • Faiza Siddiqa BDS, Demonstrator, Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi
Keywords: Dental education, Hiroshima University Dental Behavioral Inventory, pharmacy students, physiotherapy, dental students, Oral health behavior

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the differences in the oral health behaviours and attitudes among physiotherapy, pharmacy and dental students of a teaching institution of Pakistan.

A crossectional survey on all undergraduate students in disciplines of dentistry, physiotherapy and pharmacy at Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi, Pakistan was conducted. Non-probability convenient sampling technique was employed. For assessing the oral health behaviour and attitude, 'Modified Hiroshima University-Dental Behavior Inventory (HU-DBI) questionnaire, (English version)' was used.

Results reveal that almost 48% of pharmacy students reported their gums bleed while brushing compared to 29.7% dental students and 30% physiotherapy students (p= 0.029). Furthermore, almost half of the pharmacy students (47.4%) and physiotherapy students (43.6%) agreed to using a child sized toothbrush compared to only 17.6% dental students (p= <0.001). More than half of the pharmacy students (52.6%) agreed to putting off going to visit dentist until when needed as compared to dental students (35.2%) and physiotherapy students (44.5%), p= 0.023. Although the present study provides some preliminary results, it is interesting that similar behaviour and attitude towards oral health was observed in non-dental students as their dental counterparts.

Published
2017-09-30
How to Cite
Mehmood, B., Jahangir, F., Kaleem, M., Faisal, M. R., & Siddiqa, F. (2017). A SURVEY ON ORAL HEALTH BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDE AMONG DENTAL, PHYSIOTHERAPY AND PHARMACY STUDENTS. Pakistan Oral & Dental Journal, 37(3), 455-458. Retrieved from https://podj.com.pk/index.php/podj/article/view/60
Issue
Vol. 37 No. 3 (2017): July-September 2017
Section
Community Dentistry
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.