ORAL – SYSTEMIC PARADIGM: ASSESSING MEDICAL STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF DENTISTRY

Background and Objectives: Oral health remains one of the longstanding health challenges. Traditional medical curricula do not focus on oral health care and prevention resulting in misperceptions and limi-ted understanding among medical students. Methods: This study compared a total of 2412 medical and non-medical students for their oral health knowledge, attitudes and practices including tobacco use. It achieved a response rate above 95% on self – reported questionnaire. Results: About 22% participants undertook annual dental checkups regularly while 77% cited satis-factory oral health as a reason for not needing to visit a dentist. Logistic regression results showed sli-ghtly better compliance among non-medical students with pre-defined oral self – care regime while adjusting for other predictors, as indicated by more frequent daily tooth – brushing (OR 0.79, 95% CI 0.66 – 0.94, p 0.05). However, medical students had comparatively better awareness and positive oral health self – perceptions (OR 1.29, 1.07 – 1.54, p 0.01), were less likely to experience dental fear (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.53 – 0.82, p 0.0001), and were more receptive towards oral – systemic perspec-tive (OR 1.73, 95% CI 1.37 – 2.19, p 0.0001). Conclusion: Medical education should incorporate oral health competencies to foster a culture of multi-disciplinarity with corresponding reconfiguration of national health system.