Community Pharmacists' Knowledge of and Attitude to Emergency Management of Tooth Avulsion

Objectives: To assess the knowledge of Community pharmacists to emergency management of tooth avulsion.
To assess the attitude of Community pharmacists to emergency management of tooth avulsion.
Methods: This is a cross sectional descriptive study. Community Pharmacists filled a self administered structured questionnaire using purposive sampling technique. Analysis was done using the SPSS statistical package
Results: Fifty two subjects participated in the study with 24 males and 28 females.Knowledge of the community pharmacists was inadequate. A total of 9(17.3%) had encountered tooth avulsion in their practice and of these, 5(55.6%) gave medications only while 4(44.4%) referred to the Dentist. Thirteen (25%) and 12(23.1%) respectively responded satisfactorily to knowledge of handling an avulsed tooth and storage methods. A dismal 1(1.9%) perceived they had good knowledge while 16(30.8%) perceived that they had fair knowledge of first aid management of tooth avulsion. All the subjects (100%) were not satisfied with their knowledge level and 51(98.1%) were willing to be further trained.
Conclusions: The level of knowledge displayed by the Community Pharmacists was not satisfactory. However,they showed a positive attitude to acquiring more knowledge.Oral health education should be carried out for this group and inclusion of oral health in the undergraduate curriculum of Pharmacy is proposed.