Attitudes of dental and pharmacy students to oral health behaviour at Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

The Hiroshima University Dental Behaviour Inventory (HU-DBI) was used to assess the attitudes towards oral health behaviour of the pharmacy and dental college students at Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). HU-DBI consists of 20 items primarily associated with tooth brushing behaviour. All of the items have a dichotomous response format (agree/disagree). A quantitative estimate of oral health attitude and behaviour is provided by the total appropriate agree/disagree responses. The maximum possible score is 12. Greater HU-DBI score indicates better oral health attitude and behaviour. A total of 57 students participated in the survey with a response rate of 71%. There was a significant difference (p=0.0001) between dental and pharmacy college students for oral health attitudes with dental students presenting a mean HU-DBI score of 6.65 in contrast to 4.74 among pharmacy students. Significantly greater percentage of pharmacy students (83.9%) reported that they don’t worry much about visiting the dentist than the dental students (53.8%). Nearly three-fourths of pharmacy students believed that their teeth was getting worse despite of daily brushing and significantly more pharmacy students were worried about bad breath Dental college students reported better attitudes to oral health behaviour than students of pharmacy.