A survey on student's impression regarding basic science and its usefullness in clinical dental practice

Objectives: Basic sciences have long been the subject of debate for its usefulness among clinicians.
This has been further expressed by the dental students on the second half of their education. This
investigation has looked at the view of final year dental student’s point of view on basic sciences
quality and quantity for dental course and its effect on their daily practice.
Materials & Methods: 185, final year dental Students (Male & Female) from Tehran, Shahed and
Shahid Beheshti University Dental Schools were asked to participate in this investigation. A
prepared questionnaire including both qualitative and quantitative issues relate to different subjects
of current basic sciences materials was given to the subjects. Mann-whitney and Kruskall wallis
were used to analysed the data.
Results: Based on the collected data, most of the students had a common belief that courses like
"Human Anatomy", "General Pathology" and "Human Physiology" had the greatest influence in their
daily practice while "Biochemistry ", "Biophysics" and "Genetics had the least use. They believed
two courses of "Biochemistry" and "Microbiology" gained too much emphasis from the teaching
team while "Statistics", "Human Anatomy", "Genetics" and "Psychology" needed more attention
among teaching staff and organizers.
Conclusion: There seem to be slight difference on the amount of value put forward by different
dental schools on the subjects offered. Students of all three schools expressed their satisfaction on
courses of "Microbiology", "Public Health" and "Biophysics" to a great extent.
Key Words: Basic Science, Dental Students, implication, clinical dentistry