Knowledge of Last Year Students of Dentistry at Islamic Azad University, Tehran Medical Sciences, Towards Principles of Ethics in 2020

Student course is the best time to learn the principles and methods of applying professional ethics, which results in establishing proper communication with patients. However, few studies have been conducted on the level of knowledge of dental students about ethical principles. This study was conducted to investigate the knowledge of last year dental students of the Islamic Azad University of Tehran about the principles of professional ethics in 1399.

This descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study was performed by census method on 150 students of 11th and 12th semesters of dentistry using a valid and reliable questionnaire and according to the ethical principles of ADA. Finally, the data including age, gender, semester, average grade point, and average score of professional ethics were imported into SPSS 24 software and were analyzed using Mann-U- Whitney and multiple regression test. A significance level of 0.05 was considered for all analyzes.

150 students (61 men and 89 women) participated in this study. 71 students (47.4%) were in the 11th semester and 79 students were in the 12th semester (52.7%). The average age of students was 24.68 years and the average grade point of all students was 16.28. After completing the questionnaires, the average score of knowledge of professional ethics was 9.95 (55.2%). The mean score of knowledge of professional ethics in women was slightly higher than men, which was not statistically significant. There was no significant relationship between the ethics score and none of the variables of age, gender, number of credits passed, total grade point average and semester.

The level of knowledge among dental students towards the principles of professional ethics is moderate and this knowledge is not related to demographic characteristics and educational status of the students.