RESUMO
BACKGROUND: It is critical to educate dental students on the essential aspects of oral care for persons with special health care needs (shcn) as they acquire more dental diseases and 80% not receiving routine dental care. OBJECTIVE/HYPOTHESIS: To evaluate awareness and knowledge of dental students concerning oral-health care for persons with shcn, and to assess the effectiveness of an educational intervention in improving their knowledge. METHODS: Students completed an evaluation in the form of pre-post questionnaires that were answered before and immediately after the 30- minute dvd educational intervention regarding the oral health care of persons with shcn. ancova test where used to adjust for the pre knowledge and dependent t-tests were used. RESULTS: The mean⯱â¯sd of pre-test scores of all students was 15.46⯱â¯2.97, which increased to 18.09⯱â¯3.37 on the post-test. the post knowledge scores by dental class (adjusted for the pre knowledge) showed weak-significate anacova f test p value was (pâ¯<â¯0.050) however there was weak significant difference between the combined five years when compared (pâ¯<â¯0.050). however multiple comparison test (scheffe test) showed weak significance between d2 and d3 (pâ¯<â¯0.067). in addition, there was weak significant difference between post scores for each year when compared (pâ¯<â¯0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The educational intervention was effective in providing all five levels of dental students with the basic instructive information needed to care for persons with shcn. about 62% of students from all five years rated their knowledge as being minimal and about 98% reported they would use the information provided in the educational intervention.
