Awareness of Dental Trauma Management among School Teachers

Aims: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the level of knowledge and attitude of schoolteachers in Brunei towards emergency dental trauma management. A secondary objective was to investigate the association between knowledge and attitude of schoolteachers towards dental trauma and its management.

Study Design: Cross-sectional study using self-administered, pre-validated questionnaire.

Methodology: The English and Malay language self-administered and pre-validated questionnaires were distributed to a random sample of schoolteachers in five schools. The school principals distributed the questionnaires to schoolteachers that met the inclusion criteria. There were 344 schoolteachers included. The questionnaire has been pretested by 5 schoolteachers before the study was conducted.

Results: Mean knowledge score was found to be ‘poor’ (1.2) and mean attitude score was found to be ‘normal’ (39.9). A majority of the schoolteachers agreed to the need of more information on dental trauma (79.4%). Significant relationships were found between knowledge and the following factors: school (<0.001), gender (<0.001), first aid training (<0.001), dental trauma education (0.02) and prior witnessing of a dental trauma event (<0.001). However, no variables exhibited a statistically significant relationship with attitude. A positive association was found between knowledge and attitude, where a positive attitude would reflect better knowledge (rho=0.23, p <0.001).

Conclusion: The level of knowledge among the schoolteachers was found to be unsatisfactory and the level of attitude as average. There was a weak, positive association observed between schoolteachers’ knowledge and attitude. Therefore, there is a significant need for measures to be taken to raise the knowledge of this subject among these education professionals.