Attitudes of dental students to communication skills learning in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state.
Keywords:
Communication skills, Learning, Attitude, Dental studentsAbstract
Background: Effective communication is a key component of dentist-patient interaction and it is a fundamental skill that can improve the effectiveness of patient management. Communication skills training aims to develop communication not only with the patient but also with the family of the patients, colleagues and other health care professional. There is virtually no research identifying dental students’ attitude towards communication skills learning in Nigeria.
Aim: The study aimed to investigate the attitude of dental student towards communication skill learning in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study conducted among 129 undergraduate students (Part 1 – 6) of the Faculty of Dentistry, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile – Ife. A self-administered questionnaire of the communication skills attitude scale (CSAS) which comprise of both the positive attitude scale (PAS) and negative attitude scale (NAS) was used for the data collection from participants. The data collected was sorted and cleaned to remove any missing values. Inferential statistics analysis was done using IBM SPSS version 26.0.
Results: A total of 129 dental undergraduate students completed a structured questionnaire on communication skills learning; The communication skills attitude scale (CSAS). The mean score for the positive attitude scale (PAS) was 50.98±5.61 and for the negative attitude scale (NAS) was 37.64±6.56. There were no statistically significant differences based on age and study year in attitudes toward learning communication skills. However, the negative attitude scale showed a statistically significant difference between males and females (p-value=0.001).
Conclusion: The study concluded that dental students generally have a positive attitude towards communication skills learning.
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