Assessment of oral manifestations of systemic health related knowledge of medical students pursuing internship programme at a tertiary health care centre.

AIM: Clinicians across the entire medical profession are responsible for detection, prevention and imparting importance of oral health to the patients. However, many studies conducted so far show lack of knowledge of medical students regarding dental conditions. The present observational study was undertaken to evaluate the knowledge of oral manifestations of systemic diseases amongst medical students undergoing Internship program at a tertiary centre.

MATERIALS & METHOD: A self-structured Questionnaire comprising of 20 questions was used as a survey tool to assess the understanding of 100 medical students undergoing internship program. They were explained about the purpose of the study. The questionnaire consisted of an objective part Yes/No (7 questions) and subjective part designed on likert scale(13 questions). There were questions on their view on current curriculum for dentistry in medical undergraduate training and possible enhancement in teaching modalities. The subjective part had five options to choose from, Strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree And Strongly Disagree.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The responses of objective questions was recorded and percentage calculated for both options. The total score was obtained for each participant based on their reponses to the subjective questions based on the Likert scale. Student t -test was applied to calculate means between male and female students.

RESULTS: For all objective questions, percentage was calculated for affirmative and negative responses. The responses were calculated on scale5-1 for the subjective questions. Reverse scoring was done for questions 10,11,12 i. e scale 1-5. The maximum achievable score in this category was 65 which was further divided into three category as Excellent score range 55-65, Good score range 45-54, Unsatisfactory score range 35-44. The number of students in excellent category were 11, Good 66, unsatisfactory 23. The average score obtained was 48.175. The mean scores for males was 48.0161 and for females it was 48.142. The scores were slightly better for females but the difference was statistically insignificant as (p-value = 0.455056).

CONCLUSION: The present study showed good level of Knowledge on oral manifestations of systemic diseases among medical students as compared to other studies which forms an integral part of medical curriculum. The students responses on enhancing dental curriculum and teaching aids for improved education tools can help the faculty provide a better teaching learning experience.