Attitudes and Knowledge of Dental Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina Towards Child Abuse and Neglect

Introduction

Child abuse and neglect (CAN) are social and public health problems. Access to oral health care for abused and neglected children is a challenge. The aim of this study was to assess the attitudes and knowledge of dental students from Bosnia and Herzegovina towards CAN.

Materials and Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 263 dental students from two public universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The students answered 31 questions about the topic of CAN. The study population was categorised by year of study into six groups. Pearson's chi-squared test was used to analyse differences among participants regarding the year of study. The level of significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results

The results show that 10.26% of total participants had experienced some knowledge about the topic of CAN during their studies, 17.87% had read about it in professional dental literature and 8.74% had some form of education and training on the topic. Over 50% of participants answered all of the questions about social indicators of CAN correctly. The knowledge of the study participants was found to be deficient concerning some physical signs of CAN found in the orofacial region. For a significant number of questions ‘I don't know’ was a frequent answer.

Conclusion

The level of knowledge of dental students from Bosnia and Herzegovina regarding the challenge of CAN is insufficient. An important strategy this to improve this is to increase the education and training of child abuse and neglect in dental curriculums.