Attitudes of dental and medical students in their first and final years of undergraduate study to oral health behaviour

Abstract

Objective: To compare differences in attitude to oral health behaviour amongst medical and dental students when they were in years 1 and 5 of University study respectively.

Methods: Medical and dental students of Peking University in Beijing, China were invited to take part in this study. The original version of the Hiroshima University-Dental Behavioural Inventory (HU-DBI) was written in Japanese. After testing the validity of both English and Chinese versions, the revised Chinese version of the HU-DBI was administered to new medical and dental students. In their final year of University study, the same questionnaire was again administered.

Results: Significant differences were found for 13 of 21 items, reflecting an improvement in oral health attitudes and behaviour in final year dental students when compared with the time they were entrants. This difference was not found to be significant in the sample of medical students.

Conclusions: There were significant differences in oral health attitudes and behaviours in dental students between entrance to University and the final year of their study. The same was not found to be true for medical students.