Dental Students' Readiness to Tackle Social Determinants of Health: A Descriptive Qualitative Study

Despite increasing interest in incorporating courses about the social determinants of health (SDOH) in dental curricula, there is limited knowledge about how ready students feel to address SDOH in their future practice. The purpose of this investigation was to describe dental students' perceptions of undergraduate learning about SDOH and to explore how prepared they felt to address SDOH in their future practice. Methods In this qualitative descriptive investigation, we invited third-year undergraduate dental students from the Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences of McGill University, Montreal, to participate. Fifteen students took part in face-to-face, qualitative, semi-structured interviews, which were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed.

The participants reported having taken several courses related to social dentistry and explained that they were ready and willing to identify patients' SDOH. The participants recognized the importance of understanding people's oral health-related practices in the context of their social and cultural environments. However, even though they were willing to promote preventive practices tailored to patients' context of life and were open to participating in charitable community activities, they felt they lacked the necessary skills-and perhaps the motivation-to conduct upstream interventions such as advocacy.

Current dental education attempts to sensitize future dentists about SDOH may not be enough to sustain effective practice changes. It would be appropriate for dental schools to collectively reflect on how to better train students on this subject.