Relationship between dental students’ personality type and their 7- to 9-year-old patients’ dental fear at Shahid Beheshti Dental School, Tehran, Iran

Children’s dental fear is a major issue in avoidance of dental visits, which exacerbates dental health problems and is associated with multiple factors. The dentist’s behavior is one of the influential factors in dental fear. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between dentistry students’ personality type and children’s dental fear.

This descriptive, analytical, cross-sectional study was performed on 30 dentistry students and 34 children in the pediatric ward of Shahid Beheshti Dental School, Tehran, Iran. The children’s age was in the range of 7-9 years. To evaluate the students’ personality type, Bortner questionnaire was used, and to investigate children’s dental fear, the Dental Subscale of the Children's Fear Survey Schedule (CFSS-DS) was employed. The children completed the questionnaire twice, once before and once after treatment with the assistance of their parents. Fisher’s exact test (P<0.05), independent t-test (P<0.05), and ANCOVA (P<0.05) tests were performed for statistical analysis. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shahid Beheshti School of Dentistry (ethical ID: IR.SBMU.DRC.REC.1398.176).

According to the students’ responses to the Bortner questionnaire, they were divided into two groups: 18 students with type A personality and 12 students with type B personality. The children were also divided into two groups. Twenty-two children were treated by dentists with type A personality (group A), and twelve children were treated by dentists with type B personality (group B). Changes in the mean CFSS-DS score following dental treatment were +2.09±7.7 and -2.17±4.95 in group A and group B, respectively. The mean change in the CFSS score of children in group A was higher than that of children in group B, although the difference was not significant (P=0.096).

The personality type of dentistry students does not significantly affect children’s dental fear.