Knowledge of Dental Students and Dentists About Prescriptions

Objectives: The aim of this study was to verify the knowledge and self-confidence regarding ethical, legal and pharmacological aspects of accurate prescription among dentists and dental students from the Paraiba State University located in the town of Araruna, Brazil.
Methods: Students were intentionally selected from 5^th (just finished Drug Therapy discipline (DTD)) and 10^th semesters (just about to graduate). Dentists from private and public health services of the town were personally contacted. They anonymously answered a structured questionnaire divided into three blocks including perception of the DTD, current prescription legislation and drug indication itself. Multivariate logistic regression was used to check associations among sample groups. Data was also analyzed in a descriptive way. The value of p<0.05 was considered the level of statistical significance.
Results: Out of 54 students, 46 completed the questionnaire (n=46) and also all the dentists (n=10); totalizing 56 answered questionnaires (n=56). From this total: 58.9% (n=33) were women and 41.1% (n=23) were men; the age average was 24.48±5.98 years. The DTD length for 89.3% (n=50) was not enough to make them feel self-confident to prescribe and for 53.6% (n=30) it was not taught at the right moment during the course. Between groups, only 6.6% of the dental students (3 out of 46) recognized the oral hypoglycemic agents as the only drug that cannot be prescribed by the dentist, while 30% of the dentists (3 out of 10) said the same thing (p=0.040), indicating that the dentists have 6.9 times more chance to get the right answer than the students (OR=6.96, 95%CI: 1.09-44.40).
Conclusions: Dental students and dentists seem not to be confident to prescribe. Dentists had more success in getting the right answers, showing better knowledge of the issue than the dental students.