Effect of Emergency Primary Care Training Workshops: A Survey on 45 Iranian Dental School Interns.

BACKGROUND: Dentistry is a therapeutic health care profession that is related to people's health. Moreover medical emergencies often occur in dental offices that little awareness of the professional workers can have unpleasant consequences.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this interventional study, a survey of 45 final year dental students was examined. To do so, a test in terms of knowledge was taken as a standard questionnaire, and in the practical part a test was taken as on objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) test in three stations, before and after the workshop; identification of emergency instruments, the performance of intramuscular and intravenous injections and cardiopulmonary resuscitations before and after the workshop obtained data were analyzed using, SPSS version 16, Student's t-test and paired T.

RESULTS: Using the t-test, mean score of the students' knowledge prior to and after the workshop were 51 ± 13.08 and 83.41 ± 8.65 respectively (P = 0.000). The practical score (OSCE) of dental students was 50.85 ± 13.09, which after the workshop came up to 85.73 ± 7.06 came up (P = 0.000). T-test of the performance before and after the workshop had a significant difference in each of the three stations. Significant differences between male and female students' knowledge and performance scores don't exist before and after the workshop (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION: The level of knowledge and performance of students were assessed as average, therefore, training courses and revised the curriculum units are required.