Knowledge, Attitude and Practice in Anxiety, Pain and Medical Emergency Management: A National Survey on 232 Italian Dental Students.

Background: Anxiety, pain and medical emergencies are crucial concepts in the dental field. Dental students need training, but little is known of their competence on these topics.

Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the current state of Italian dental students' preparation for, attitudes to, and perceptions of medical emergency, anxiety and pain management.

Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on Italian dental students with the collaboration of the Italian Association of Dentistry Students. Students were sent a questionnaire, the contents of which were as follows: Part I (demographic information); Part II (22 questions: 12 on Knowledge, 8 on Attitude and 2 on Practice, relating to three domains: treatment of anxiety, pain and medical emergencies). The Knowledge section consisted of 12 multiple-choice questions, each with five answer options, only one of which was correct; a score of 1 was assigned for each correct answer and 0 for incorrect answers, resulting in a total score ranging from 0 to 12. The Attitude section included 8 questions, each with five possible answers scored from 0 to 4, for a total score range of 0 to 32. The Practice section comprised 2 questions with three response options, evaluated with scores from 0 to 1, yielding a total possible score between 0 and 2.

Results: From the 38 participating universities, a total of 232 eligible questionnaires were received with an average of 6.11 questionnaires per university site. Knowledge section: The mean score was 3.51 ± 1.79 points without geographical differences. For the anxiety domain, the mean total score was 0.54 ± 0.66 points. A geographical difference (p-value: 0.049) was observed between the North (0.41 ± 0.59) and the South of Italy (0.65 ± 0.67). For the pain domain, the mean result was 1.31 ± 0.98 points. For the medical emergency domain, the mean result was 1.65 ± 1.01 points. No geographical differences were found in the pain and emergency domains. Attitude section: The mean total score was 17.45 ± 3.68 without geographical differences. Practice section: 53.45% of students stated that they had never taken courses in anxiety management. Regarding emergencies, 25.43% had never attended BLS courses. No geographical differences were found.

Conclusion: There is a clear need to improve the effectiveness of university training to guarantee the skills to identify/prevent medical complications related to anxiety and pain in clinical practice.