Dental Students' Temporomandibular Disorder-Related Education, Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior, How Do Personal Experiences Matter?

Objectives: Approximately, 5%-12% of adults in the United States are estimated to have temporomandibular disorders (TMD), making it crucial that dentists are optimally trained to diagnose and treat TMD. The objectives were to assess dental students' TMD-related education, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior and explore if personal TMD-related experiences were associated with constructs of interest.

Methods: A total of 469 dental students participated in this survey-based cross-sectional study by reporting personal TMD experiences, TMD-related knowledge, attitudes, and professional behaviors. Factor analyses were used to create indices for constructs of interest. Hypotheses about the relationships between these constructs were tested in correlational analysis.

Results: Approximately, 29.5% were satisfied with their TMD-related dental school education, 49.9% felt well-prepared to diagnose TMD in classroom, and 35.6% in clinical settings; 35.4% felt well prepared in classroom and 25.2% in clinical settings about treating TMD; 29.4% were confident in their TMD-related knowledge. Students described their knowledge about risk factors (5-point scale with 1 = no knowledge, Mean/SD = 4.20 ± 0.511) and psychosocial risk factors (Mean/SD = 3.63 ± 0.670), positively. They had positive TMD-related attitudes, specifically that it is important to diagnose TMD (Mean/SD = 4.42 ± 0.658), that they felt responsible to treat patients with TMD (Mean/SD = 4.14 ± 0.754) and would manage TMD in their career (Mean/SD = 4.15 ± 0.756). They neither disagreed/nor agreed that they were comfortable selecting (Mean/SD = 2.90 ± 0.930) and performing diagnostic procedures (Mean/SD = 2.80 ± 0.937), recognizing TMD signs/symptoms (Mean/SD = 3.32 ± 0.909) and treating patients with TMD (Mean/SD = 2.82 ± 0.924). The more severe their own TMD-related problems were, the more they knew about diagnosing and treating TMD (r = 0.11; p < 0.05) and risk factors (r = 0.15; p < 0.01), but the more they realized their own TMD-knowledge related limitations (r = 0.13; p < 0.01). The more TMD-related experiences they had, the more they educated themselves about TMD (r = 0.13; p < 0.05), the more motivated they were to learn more about it (r = 0.15; p < 0.01), the more they knew about risk factors (r = 0.17; p < 0.001), the more positive were their attitudes (r = 0.13; p < 0.01) and the more positively they evaluated treating patients with TMD (r = 0.19; p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Dental education about TMD has to be improved. Personal TMD experiences are positively associated with TMD-related educational motivation, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior.