Assessment of Knowledge and Self-Rated Emergency Preparedness amongst Undergraduate Dental Students in Lagos State: A Pilot Study

Background: A medical emergency is an unwanted, unexpected reaction or complication, and few studies that assessed the knowledge and competency about emergencies in the dental clinics in Nigeria have been focussed on dentists and interns. This study, therefore, seeks to assess knowledge and self-assessed preparedness on medical emergencies amongst undergraduate dental students at two dental schools in Lagos State. Methodology: This was a descriptive study at two dental schools in Lagos State. The participants were selected consecutively from the class using the class register of the final-year undergraduate students of the two dental schools in Lagos for the 2017/2018 academic year as the sampling frame. Data were collected using a pre-tested structured close-ended self-administered questionnaire. Data entry and analysis were done using SPSS version 20, and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The age of the respondents ranged from 20 to 29 years with a mean age of 23.60 +/- 2.1. Ninety-three per cent of students adequately assessed the patient's medical history, but only 64.9% regularly used a medical pro forma to obtain the health history of the patients. Forty (72%) respondents believed that they had good medical emergency preparedness while 17 (28%) assessed themselves as having poor skills. However, 38.6% of the students had poor knowledge about medical emergencies while 50% had fair knowledge. Only 10.5% of the students had good knowledge. Conclusion: Although many of the dental students indicate that they had good emergency preparedness, an assessment of their knowledge showed that only 10.5% of the students had good knowledge about handling medical emergencies. This highlights the need for a review of curriculum as well as a modification in delivery style to a practical, hands-on teaching and emergency scenarios simulations to enhance the students' skills and self-confidence in managing emergencies in a dental setting.