Dentists as Oral Health Educators: explorations of a practice

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the social representations of health education according to dental students from two schools of dentistry in Brasília-DF (a public and a private one), and to dentists graduated in the 80s or after the 90s. The participants were chosen at random in Brasília-DF. This research also aimed to serve as a basis for a detailed and thorough investigation into health education to serve the needs of the Brazilian population, and to contribute to graduate students with a more adequate professional profile. Sixty subjects took part in this study, 40 dental students (20 from each teaching institution) and 20 dentists (10 from each range studied, as mentioned above). A questionnaire with multiple choice questions was used for collection of the subjects’ social and demographic information, including a specific field for the recording of a Free Word Association Test. In this test, the subjects were asked to say the 5 first words related to the studied subject and then select the two most important words among these 5. These words were analyzed according to the Central Nucleus Theory. The results of the multiple choice questions were transferred to tables and representative figures and diagrams. Results showed that social representations of health education according to both dentists and students tended to be education/prevention.