Routine medical check among dental health workers in Edo State

Abstract

Objective To assess the knowledge and practice of routine medical check among dental health workers in public hospitals in Edo state.

Methods: This questionnaire based cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out in four public hospitals in Edo state. Data were collected using self-administered structured questionnaires. The questionnaires consisted of three sections. Information collected from the 103 respondents were entered and analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 software.  Descriptive statistics, frequencies, and charts were used to summarize variables of interest while association between different variables were tested using chi-square test with p-value set at 0.05.

Results: All the dental health workers were aware of routine medical check. There were more respondents (52.4%) in the age group 31-40. More male (50.5%) than female (49.5) took part in the study. Registrar cadre (23.3%) represented the highest proportion of professional respondents with 39.8% of the respondents having practiced for 6-10 years. The proportion of respondents who were slightly obese was 41.7% while one respondent each was under weight and morbidly obese. Majority, (97.1% and 97.1%) of the respondents claimed not to smoke cigarette and alcohol respectively. Most of the respondents knew what constituted routine medical check but only 25.2% of the respondents undergo regular medical check. Also, only a few of the female respondents had undergone cervical smear examination (28.8%) and breast examination (40.0%). Profession and marital status of the respondents were found to significantly affect the frequency of routine medical check (p<0.05).

Conclusion: The level of awareness of routine medical check among dental health workers was high but the practice was poor. Therefore, measures should be put in place to increase practice while sustaining the high level of awareness.