Physicians’ knowledge of and adherence to improving oral health

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Sepideh Rabiei¹  Simin Z Mohebbi¹  Jorma I Virtanen²  Kristiina Patja³ 

[1] Community Oral Health Department, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 1439955991, Tehran, Iran;Department of Oral Public Health, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 41, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland;Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 41, 00014, Helsinki, Finland;Department of Community Dentistry, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 5281, 90014, Oulu, Finland;Pro Medico, Association for Medical Continuous Professional Development in Finland, P.O. Box 49, 00501, Helsinki, Finland;

关键词: Attitude;    Knowledge;    Physician;    Primary care;    Dentistry;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-12-855

 received in 2012-05-10, accepted in 2012-10-02,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIntegration of oral health promotion into general health care has been highly recommended by the World Health Organization. Primary-care physicians can as part of their general health care promote and contribute to improved oral health care. Our aim was to investigate primary-care physicians’ knowledge of oral health, their attitudes toward delivering oral health care (OHC), and their willingness to obtain more education in this field.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of all primary-care physicians working in the public health centers of Tehran city. An anonymous self-administered questionnaire queried their knowledge in pediatric- and general medicine-related areas of dentistry, providing knowledge scores to be calculated for three domains. The physicians’ attitudes toward OHC and willingness to pursue continuous education underwent evaluation with statements utilizing a 5-point Likert scale. Totally, 220 physicians took part in the survey (response rate: 92%). Chi-square test, linear and logistic regression, and t-test served for statistical analyses.ResultsThe physicians’ knowledge score was significantly lower in the pediatric domain than in the dental and medical domains (p < 0.001). The number of physicians answering correctly to the pediatric questions was less than 40%. Almost all physicians (95%) reported it necessary for a physician to know about OHC and admitted (78%) that physicians’ general knowledge in this field is inadequate. Further, 77% of the physicians expressed a will to implement preventive oral health activities in their practice, and almost two-thirds (62%) of them showed a willingness to pursue further education about OHC. Those with higher knowledge scores had a greater willingness to deliver oral health care to their patients.ConclusionsPhysicians’ lack of knowledge of OHC and their generally positive attitudes toward it revealed a great need for planning of a continuous medical education program in primary care.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Rabiei et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.