Patient perceptions of dental students' professionalism in undergraduate prosthodontic clinics: a cross-sectional...

This study evaluated the professionalism of dental students in dental clinics from the patients' perspective.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 312 patients attending undergraduate dental clinics at Jordan University Hospital where the invitation was extended to 350 participants and the response rate was 89.1%. The survey comprised four comprehensive sections: (1) sociodemographic participant information including age, gender, residency, education, and travel details, (2) dental student characteristics such as gender and academic year (4th or 5th year) (3) patients' awareness of treatment, and (4) patients' satisfaction with the provided treatment. The data were analysed using SPSS. The Chi-square test was used to assess the significance of observed vs. expected item responses. Spearman's rho rank correlation analyzed associations between professionalism scores and participants' age, education, travel distance, and travel time.

The participants assigned high ratings (strongly agree and agree on responses) for the majority of the items. The median scores of most items were large (scores of 4 and 5) with a small interquartile range indicating participants' tendency to assign high scores for student professionalism in this investigation. Patients rated professionalism higher for short procedures (P = 0.046) and for female students (P = 0.046), regardless of the student's year of study (P = 0.840). The observed responses to the professionalism items were significantly different from the expected responses (P < 0.001). Older participants were assigned lower professionalism scores (Spearman's rho = -0.112, P = 0.048), while travel time showed no significant correlation with scores (P > 0.05). Higher education levels were associated with lower professionalism ratings (B = -1.106, P = 0.045, R² = 0.034), and female students received higher scores (B = 3.292, P = 0.039, R² = 0.014).

Dental students demonstrated high level of professionalism, as reflected in patient ratings. Patients' perceptions were influenced by their sociodemographic factors and treatment duration, highlighting the importance of tailored approaches to clinical care.