Educational Initiative for School Nurses and Physical Education Teachers on the Emergency Management of Traumatic Dental Injuries in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Abstract

Emergency management of traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) is an urgent matter crucial for long term prognosis, especially in cases of tooth avulsion. School playgrounds and physical education (PE) classes are common sites for TDIs. School nurses and PE teachers find themselves the first respondents to TDIs occurring on school premises. Proper knowledge of the emergency management of the TDIs on the part of school nurses and PE teachers will inevitably lead to better outcomes. The aim of the study was to assess the knowledge of school nurses and PE teachers in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) about the management of emergency dental trauma at school and to measure the educational impact of the specially designed educational session on school nurses’ and PE teachers’ knowledge regarding TDIs both immediately after the session and three months later. The design of this study was a longitudinal (cohort) prospective pre- and post t- test design involving a questionnaire survey distributed to the school nurses and PE teachers during an educational session, t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures were used to compare the three group means for the same participants, a P-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant in all statistical analysis. Results of the repeated ANOVA test revealed a significant improvement in the knowledge score among participants from the initial survey to immediately after the educational session, and sustainability of knowledge from immediately after the educational session to three months after the first session. The study demonstrated an initial lack of knowledge about the emergency management of the TDIs among school nurses and PE teachers in Dubai. A significant improvement in the overall knowledge score was observed between the time before the educational session and both immediately after and three months later. Recommendations for more training programs are essential for school nurses and PE teachers to improve their knowledge and awareness for better future handling of dental emergencies.