A. S. Aishwarya, Deepa Gurunathan

Abstract

Dental education has been asserted as one of the challenging and stressful fields of the study as dental students are expected to acquire diverse competencies such as academic and clinical competencies and interpersonal skills. Practitioners and students dealing with the field of pediatric dentistry have reported high-stress level on the basis of patient management. The aim of this study is to assess the level of stress among dental students and methods of managing children while performing pedodontic procedure. A self-designed questionnaire was given to 275 undergraduates and 21 postgraduates, the data obtained were analyzed using Chi-square test, and the stress levels were compared. Third-year students found it difficult to overcome the stress and were less confident while treating a child patient. Overall, 43% of students were more stressed while giving local anesthesia and 27.7% students were more stressed during extraction. Among students of all years, 50.3% of students preferred tell-show-do method for managing a child patient. Acceptance and spiritual methods were preferred by most of the students of all years as coping strategies to overcome stress. This study reveals that stress level was generally high among the beginners of clinical practice and decreased on continuous practice. Students who had knowledge on child’s psychology and behavioral management techniques agreed that it helped in reducing stress level.