Brazilian Dental Students’ Attitudes About Provision of Care for Patients Living in Poverty

Abstract

The aims of this study were to investigate dental students' attitudes toward people living in poverty and the extent to which their perceptions were associated with their willingness to treat those patients in their future practice. All 910 dental students enrolled in three Brazilian public universities in 2010 were invited to take part in a cross-sectional survey. A total of 766 students (83.7% response rate) completed the self-administered questionnaire on their perceptions of and attitudes about poverty and their intention to provide dental care to poor people. The responding students showed slightly positive attitudes about people living in poverty; however, a high percentage (35%) reported thinking they were different from the rest of the population. Nevertheless, most of these students expressed willingness to provide care to underserved populations in their future practice; this willingness was found to be associated with their beliefs about poverty (OR 1.65; 95% CI=1.41-1.94). Overall, the study found that these dental students had altruistic views toward people living in poverty. However, they seemed to lack a deep understanding of poverty that may prevent them from acting on their good intentions.

Tools used in nursing education to assess attitudes about poverty: An integrative review

“…A literature search showed that few studies in nursing education use tools to attitudes about poverty. This finding might be justified because limited systematization of poverty teaching assessment occurs in the training of nursing students, and when this content is offered, it occurs in an unsystematic and sporadic way in classes (Blair, 2010), not as part of the curricular component of undergraduate courses (Dos Santos et al, 2017;Watts et al, 2021). Knowledge of the effective ways to teach students about the intersection of poverty and health is still scarce (Reutter et al, 2004;Sanko et al, 2021).…”

Representações Sociais de Estudantes de Odontologia sobre o Atendimento em Clínica Odontopediátrica

“…A visão altruística dos estudantes quanto à empatia para ajudar a recuperar a saúde bucal das crianças mais carentes em recursos socioeconômicos, observada neste estudo, também foi constatada por outros autores, como questão importante na preparação da futura força de trabalho para que sejam profissionais socialmente responsáveis (Folayan et al, 2014;Santos, Madathil, Zuanon, Bedos, & Nicolau, 2017) Os principais pontos de dificuldade foram relacionados à insistência para a criança colaborar ou manter a boca aberta, ao comportamento inconstante, à inexperiência na comunicação e à insegurança associada à falta de prática. Este achado está em consonância com os resultados de pesquisas de outros autores em que os discentes se sentiam angustiados ao lidar com uma criança chorando (Nascimento et al, 2016); os principais fatores estressores nas aulas clínicas foram relacionados ao manejo do comportamento não colaborador (Vargas et al, 2013;Gerreth et al, 2019); e índices mais altos de estresse foram observados em universitários quando comparados a profissionais experientes (Davidovich et al, 2015).…”

Career Prospects of Young Dentists in Switzerland

“…The two styles of work are often in contrast, both with strengths and weaknesses. Young dentists in UK reported to prefer to work in private practice [13], while a similar sample of Brazilian dental students at the end of their academic career reported the opposite [14]. This dissimilarity preference may be influenced by characteristics associated with the work, such as financial lucrativeness, professional status, job security, flexible work options, and the independence of a career in healthcare [12,[15][16][17][18].…”