AbstractBackground: Monitoring the confidence of students in completing clinical tasks by dental institutions could serve to assess their preparedness for future independent clinical practice. Aim: To obtain information regarding the confidence level exhibited by clinical dental students in various aspects of restorative dentistry. Study setting and design: The cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among the final year undergraduate dental students and interns of 2 dental colleges in Mangaluru, South Kanara. Materials and methods: Self administered questionnaires were distributed among 293 final year undergraduate dental students and interns.The cohorts were asked to score their level of confidence in 15 aspects of restorative dentistry using Likert’s 5 point scale. Statistical analysis used: The descriptive statistics was calculated using the SPSS version 20.0 and Mann Whitney test was applied to assess the association. The level of statistical significance was kept at p< 0.05. Results:The response rate for the survey was 100%. Interns showed higher confidence levels in almost all aspects of restorative dentistry particularly in diagnosis (p =0.028), pre-operative procedures (p=0.000), manipulation of glass ionomer cement (p=0.043) and dental composite (p=0.000). Final year students and interns were comparably confident in restorative procedures (p=0.111) except for management of inadvertent pulp exposure in which interns showed greater confidence (p=0.003). Both interns and final year students exhibited low confidence in management of complex situations (p=0.217). Conclusion: Interns exhibited high confidence in restorative dentistry when compared to final years. Further training in management of complex situations could be of definite advantage.
Keywords: Confidence Level; Dental Education; Restorative Dentistry.
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