Effects of Teaching Ergonomic Principles on Working Status in Dental Students

Background: Dentistry is considered a high-risk profession for developing musculoskeletal disorders, which can be prevented by resorting to ergonomics training. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of ergonomics training on working status in dental students. Materials and Methods: The present quasi-interventional study was conducted in 2017 on 57 students of a clinic affiliated to the Department of Dentistry of Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran. Before and after holding a one-day training program entitled, “Introduction to different musculoskeletal disorders and ergonomic principles in dentistry", two executive directors of the research project as direct observers used the method of rapid entire body assessment (REBA) to evaluate working status in the students. Descriptive statistics, i.e. frequency and relative frequency, were used to describe the data, and the Wilcoxon test to analyze the data in SPSS-25 (α = 0.05). Results: Working status was found to be at least at a moderate level of risk in 86% of the students before the training and in 70% afterwards. The worst working status was observed in the Department of Pediatrics before the training, and in the Department of Prosthetics after. Significant differences were also observed in REBA scores after compared to before the training (P<0.05). Conclusion: The working status of a large proportion of the dental students was at least at a moderate level of risk. Given their significant effect, training programs are recommended to be consistently held for the students working in clinics from the very beginning of their career.