Self-Perceived Confidence of Final-Year Dental Students in Oral Surgery for Adults and Children

Undergraduate dental training should nurture students' self-confidence to perform basic oral surgical procedures. Inadequate confidence can lead to hesitance and anxiety, which may compromise patient safety and the quality of dental care.

This study aimed to evaluate the confidence levels of final-year dental students in performing oral surgical procedures for adults and children and to explore the factors that influence their confidence.

A structured questionnaire was distributed electronically to dental students at the end of their final year. Descriptive statistics and Spearman's correlation (p-value ≤ 0.05) were used to analyse the data.

N = 503 participated. Students were very confident in giving infiltration and Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block (IANB) (73.8% N = 371, 58.8% N = 296), performing simple permanent (anterior: 56.9% N = 286, posterior: 51.1% N = 257) and primary tooth extraction (anterior: 53.7% N = 270, posterior: 51.7% N = 260). However, they were 'somewhat confident' performing third molar extraction (upper: 37% N = 186, lower: 39.6% N = 199), writing drug prescriptions (42.7% N = 210), managing postoperative swelling (37.85 N = 190) and extracting for the medically compromised patients (37.2% N = 187). Students were not confident performing root separation (32.4% N = 163), bone removal (41.6% N = 209) or raising a flap (43.3% N = 218). Half of the students indicated, 'I did not encounter or have the chance to extract certain types of teeth', as a factor that lowers their confidence (50.1% N = 252).

Students were less confident performing third molar extraction, surgical extraction procedures, writing drug prescriptions and extraction for medically compromised patients. Further clinical exposure to such procedures is expected to raise students' confidence.