Anxiety Levels in Dental Students Managing Pediatric Patients

Dental students experience anxiety when treating patients. This study investigated junior and senior dental students' anxiety levels and the associated factors when managing pediatric patients.

Students were invited to complete an online questionnaire with 27 questions. Levels of anxiety were collected based on a Likert scale (not anxious = 0, slightly anxious = 1, fairly anxious = 2, and very anxious = 4). Multivariable proportional odds regression was used to evaluate associations and Wilcoxon's rank sum test with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was used to compare anxiety levels between senior and junior students.

A total of 123 students, 54 seniors, and 73 females participated in the study. Students reporting being fairly or very anxious ranged from 3% for performing an oral examination on a child aged 10-12 years old to 69% for placing a rubber dam on a child 3-5 years old. For all procedures, students were most anxious when treating children aged 3-5 years old, with adjusted odds ratio for being more anxious of 3.4 (95% CI 2.8-4.2, p < 0.0001) and 14 (95% CI: 11-20, p < 0.0001) compared to children aged 6-9 and 10-12 years, respectively. In the adjusted analysis, juniors had 1.9-fold higher odds of reporting more anxiety compared to seniors (95% CI 1.1-3.3, p = 0.019).

Students reported substantial levels of anxiety when treating children aged 3-5 years old. Junior students reported higher levels of anxiety when providing restorative procedures and extraction for 10- to 12-year-olds.