Assessing the knowledge and attitude of dentists and creating awareness about child abuse and neglect

Aim: This study aims to assess the knowledge level and attitude of dentists in Turkey about child abuse and neglect (CAN), and to increase the awareness of dentists with the informative booklet issued at the end of the assessment. Material and Method: This descriptive research was conducted in 2020 in Turkey, and included a total of 1.000 dentists. An electronic survey consisting of three sections and 45 questions was taken to the dentists. The first section included the personal data of the dentists, the second section consisted of their level of knowledge about CAN, and the third section included the questions to assess their attitutes about CAN. An educational booklet link has been added to the end of the survey to increase the awareness of the dentists about CAN. Normal distribution of variables was examined with Shapiro-Wilk's test and/or Kolmogorov-Smirnov test due to number of units. To examine the differences among the groups, since the variables were normally distributed, Independent T test and One-Way ANOVA were used depending on the numbers of the groups. In case there was statistically significant difference in One-Way ANOVA, Tukey's HSD test was used in homogeneous groups variances, and Tamhane's test was conducted when the variances were not homogeneous. Results: The dentists taking part in the study were asked 27 questions in order to assess their knowledge level about CAN, and the mean score was determined 20,51 (64%), while the maximum score the participants could get was 32. The mean values for knowledge level about CAN were found to be significantly higher for women than men, for university hospital employees than private clinic employees, for attending physicians than non-attending, for pediatric dentistry than oral diagnosis and radiology, periodontology, prosthodontics, orthodontics and endodontics specialists, for those with undergraduate and postgraduate education than those without education, and finally for those having received postgraduate education in vocational continuing training than those educated in PhD/career education. When the attitudes of the dentists were examined, 19,4% stated having suspected of CAN cases during their career, and 45,36% of them suspected of physical abuse, 54,63% reported those CAN incidents, while 44,34% of those reporting dentists stated having reported to a supervisor in the same institution. Besides, 79,6% of the dentists believe that they are not equipped with adequate knowledge and experience to determine a suspected CAN case, while 97,3% expressed their willingness to receive education on this subject. Conclusion: It is suggested that CAN should be included into dentistry undergraduate, career and doctorate educations and vocational continuing educations.