Assesment of awareness and attitude of dental ergonomics among international students. ; Tarptautinių studentų dantų ergonomikos supratimo ir požiūrio įvertinimas.

Aim: To evaluate attitude and awareness of dental ergonomics among international dental students at LSMU. Material and methods: 100 2nd-5th academic year international dental students were enrolled in this study. The self-administered consisted of 25 questions about sociodemographic characteristics, self-reported pain prevalence, duration spent with gadgets, hours of clinical practice, attitude and awareness towards ergonomics and spinal and lumbar back pain. The questionnaires were distributed through online. Participation was anonymous and voluntarily. Data were analysed using SPSS 20. Results: Participants were 52% female and 48% male. Overall 75% of dental students knew the correct ergonomic posture during clinical work. Additionally, a half (51.0%) of all participants experienced lumbar and cervical pain during day. Considering the complaints of spinal pain, the most commonly dental students (37.4%) reported about appeared spinal back pain after 1 hour of clinical work. Furthermore, 72.4% of dental students believed that spinal pain had negative impact on the quality of life. In addition, more senior year dental students (85.7%) believed that lumbar and cervical back pain negatively affected the quality of life. Conclusions: Majority of international dental students were aware toward dental ergonomics. Although senior students spent more time during clinical practice than younger ones, majority of dental students among them reported about experienced lumbar pain. Thus more emphasis of dental ergonomics is needed among dental undergraduates. Keywords: Ergonomics, awareness, pain, attitude, musculoskeletal disorders, dental students