Knowledge on management of traumatic dental injuries among school-teachers in Lucknow

Abstract

Introduction: Dental trauma is one of the most important oral health problems in children. Most of the time these unwanted situations occurred in school premises. Hence, school teachers are the first to attend these incidents. Aim: To evaluate the knowledge of school-teachers in Lucknow with regard to emergency management of dental trauma. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included a total of 162 teachers from different private and public schools of Lucknow, which was divided into 4 zones. Two schools were randomly selected from each zone. Questionnaire was used to collect information regarding teachers′ educational background, gender, type of school, attitude and practices about dental trauma. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by the Cronbach α coefficient. Chi-squire test was used to assess the association between the overall knowledge score and demographic profile of school-teachers. Results: Majority of participants had received tertiary education. Maximum (80%) school teachers in the age group of 30-40 years had "fair" knowledge regarding implantation. Only 31% female-teachers had "good" knowledge about cleaning of avulsed tooth. Nearly, two-third of public school teachers (73%) had a "fair" overall knowledge, whereas approximately half (52%) of school teachers in private school had an overall "good" knowledge regarding the management of traumatic dental injuries. Conclusion: Majority of the school teachers have "fair" level of knowledge regarding the management of dental trauma. With more of educational campaigns like teachers training programs, there can be further enhancement of the knowledge that in turn can help teachers to handle these kinds of situations in a much better way.

Keywords

• Dental trauma
• knowledge
• school-teachers