Attitude of Dental Students for Personal and Professional Concerns about Rural Dental Practice

Context and Aim: The shortage of health professionals in rural areas contributes towards a discriminatory health care delivery. Accessibility of health services is a multidimensional concept that refers to geographical, economic (affordability), organizational and cultural (acceptability) factors that can facilitate and/or, hinder the use of services in rural areas. Oral health is an integral part of general health. Though highly preventable, oral diseases are the most common chronic diseases amongst all age groups. Furthermore, accessing dental services is particularly hard for people from the underserved and rural areas. Thus, the impact of dental care crisis has been and continues to be greater in rural areas. To add to this, paucity of dentists practicing in rural areas with the preference of dentists to locate their practices in urban areas does not bode well for the future of dental care for the rural population in the near future, too. Attitude of dental students plays an important role in determining the future dental work force in rural areas. With this background, the present study attempted to evaluate the attitude of dental students towards rural dental practice based on gender and year of education. Materials and Methods: The present study was based on a cross-sectional study design with 30-item questionnaire survey instrument employed and distributed amongst the undergraduate and postgraduate dental students. The questionnaire comprised of four parts including the first part which focused on information regarding the demographic details and opinion about the rural dental practice, the second part dealt with the professional concerns perceived regarding rural dental practice while the third and fourth parts dealt with the personal and general concerns of the dental students regarding the rural dental practice respectively. Anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents was given utmost importance while participation in the study was kept voluntary. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 12.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). The said data was analyzed for descriptive and inferential statistics. Independent student’s t-test and One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used for comparison among the variables while chisquare test was used to determine association between the variables. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Results: From a total of 550 dental students, 428 respondents completed the questionnaire (Response Rate: 77.8%). No significant difference was observed in the attitude of the students based on gender (p = 0.43) while a statistically significant difference was observed in the attitude of students based on the year of their education with a positive attitude towards rural dental practice generally noted in the first year Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) students which significantly declined with the increasing level of education (p = 0.01). Conclusion: Dental students are more influenced by the negative aspects of rural dental practice though they have, in their mind, a positive approach for the same at the beginning of their education but this significantly declined with the increasing level of their education. Also, many dental students have a poor understanding of the fact what the term ‘rural’ actually means and of the rural health issues, in general. The present study, actually, adds to the understanding of the challenges that are faced by the dental professionals in rural dental practice.