Perceived sources of stress amongst final year dental under graduate students in a dental teaching institution at Bangalore, India: A cross sectional study.

Background: Dental schools are known to be highly demanding and stressful learning environments. Dentistry involves an acquisition of required academic, clinical and interpersonal skills during the course of learning. Practicing dentistry requires clinical skills and patient management skills, which also add to the stress perceived by the students. Identifying sources of stress represents the crucial first step towards advocating policy changes and strategies to alleviate the stressors and enhance students' stress coping skills. The aim of this study was to identify self-reported sources of the stress among the final year [4 th year] dental undergraduate students in a Dental Teaching Institution in Bangalore, India. Materials and Methods: A 38 items, 4-point Likert Scale item modified Dental Environmental Stress (DES) questionnaire, addressing 5 stressor domains (living accommodation, interpersonal relationships, academics, clinical skills and miscellaneous) was administered to all final year undergraduate dental students of the Institution. Items and domains were considered to be perceived as "stressful", when students classified them as 'slightly', 'moderately' or 'severely stressful'. Descriptive and bivariate analyzes based on chi square tests were performed. Results: Out of the 38 items, 19 items were reported to be "stressful" by >70% of the students. Of these, examinations, difficulty in managing difficult cases, lack of patient co-operation, difficulty and amount of course work and completing clinical requirements were reported to be "stressful" by >85% of the students. Personal physical health, difficulty in making friends, staying with roommates, narcotic substance dependencies were least commonly reported to be "stressful". Discussion and Conclusion: The stress provoking factors among >70% of the students are quite similar to those reported by the researchers' worldwide. Curricular changes, student support mechanisms at departmental/institutional level with appropriate policy changes need to be considered to assist the students in coping with identified stressors.

Oral health-related KAP among 11- to 12-year-old school children in a government-aided missionary school of Bangalore city.

BACKGROUND: To organize community-oriented oral health promotion programs systematic analysis of the oral health situation would be needed, including information on oral health knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP). AIM: The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) toward oral health among 11 to 12-year-old school children in a government-aided missionary school of Bangalore city. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study group comprised of 212 children (Male: 108; Female; 104) who were in the age group of 11-12 years studying in a government-aided missionary school of Bangalore city. Data on oral health KAP were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Statistical significance was determined by Chi-square test. RESULTS: This survey found that only 38.5% of the children brush their teeth two or more times a day. Pain and discomfort from teeth (35.1%) were common while dental visits were infrequent. Fear of the dentist was the main cause of irregular visit in 46.1% of study participants. High proportion of study participants reported having hidden sugar at least once a day: soft drinks (32.1%), milk with sugar (65.9%), and tea with sugar (56.1%). It was found that 5.4% and 3.9% of study participants smoke and chew tobacco, respectively. CONCLUSION: Results of this study suggest that oral health KAP of study participants are poor and needs to be improved. Systematic community-oriented oral health promotion programs are needed to improve oral health KAP of school children.