Investigating Patient's Attitude Referred to Health Centers of Yazd in Regard with their Inappropriate Beliefs about Dentistry in 2012

The role of inappropriate thoughts in preventing an access to desirable level of oral health in society seems to be undeniable. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the patients’ attitude referred to health centers of Yazd in regard with inappropriate beliefs about dentistry in 2012.
In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 300 patients referred to oral health centers of Yazd were selected via a two-stage cluster random sampling method. In order to obtain data, a questionnaire was used which its validity was substantiated by a team of specialists and its reliability was confirmed utilizing re-testing via the correlation coefficient of 95%. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first part involved the demographic information and the second part entailed the most common beliefs about dentistry. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS ver.16, applying ANOVA, T-test, turkey test and Pearson correlation coefficient.
The average score of attitude was 2.87 ±0.63 out of 5. Half of the patients (50%) revealed a moderate attitude towards dental care and only 14.7% had a high level of attitude. The mean score of inappropriate beliefs demonstrated no significant statistical difference between males and females (P.Value=0.363), though there was a significant relationship among age, education level and career with inappropriate beliefs (P.value= 0.001).
The study results revealed that the level of inappropriate beliefs about dentistry was in moderate level in the studied society, which such beliefs belonged to half of the population. Therefore, in order to reach appropriate results regarding oral health, enhancing the knowledge level of individuals seems to be necessitated prior to any planning for health education and preventive cares.