Attitudes of dental students towards patients with special healthcare needs: Can they be improved?

INTRODUCTION: Lack of knowledge and skills as well as negative attitudes towards patients with special healthcare needs may adversely affect the services available to this group. In 2010, a line on the treatment of patients with special healthcare needs has been implemented in the dental curriculum at the Medical University of Vienna, including five seminars and a practical course. In this study, we examine to what extent the programme helps improve attitudes towards persons with special healthcare needs and positively impacts the readiness to engage in treating this clientele. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In 2017 and 2018, all students who were in their fourth study year participated in the study. Students' attitudes were assessed before the first seminar, after the last seminar and after the practical course. At all three time points, the same fully structured questionnaire was used, including established instruments for the assessment of emotional reactions and the desire for social distance plus ad hoc questions for assessing students' future intention to treat patients with special healthcare needs. The data were analysed by means of linear fixed models. RESULTS: At the end of the line devoted to patients with special healthcare needs, students tended less to express negative emotions and showed more positive emotional reactions than before the start of the programme. However, students' social acceptance of such patients and their readiness to engage in treating them did not change significantly. DISCUSSION: While our programme was able to improve students' emotional reactions to people with special healthcare needs, it proved unable to reduce the desire for social distance and to lower the barrier when it comes to treatment. It is planned to further develop our programme which, hopefully, will then succeed in increasing students’ readiness to treat this clientele. CONCLUSION: Improving dental students' emotional reactions to patients with special healthcare needs does not necessarily translate into greater readiness to treat this clientele.