Viewpoints of the Faculty Members on the Patient-Centred Education in Dentistry

Introduction: Proper dental education and meeting the needs of society and the need to change the educational method towards comprehensive patient care becomes more apparent. This study was conducted to investigate the views of faculty members of dental schools towards patient-centred education in dentistry. Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, the views of 325 professors of all dental schools in Iran in 2020 were reviewed. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire containing the dimensions and components of patient-centred dental education. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and Friedman test, Smart PLS application with confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyse the data. Results: In this study, the dimensions of patient-centred dental education, including student efficiency, evaluation, educational strategies, participation power, patient, planning and management and structure preparation were studied. Each dimension was examined from the perspective of its components .The results obtained from the confirmatory factor analysis test showed that the amount of factor loads obtained for all components is more than 0.3 and (P<0.05) with values ​​greater than 1.96 and the value of combined reliability for most components is greater than 0.7. Evaluation dimension with an average rank of 5 was in the highest and the patient with an average rank of 2.88 in the lowest and the component need to change the evaluation process with an average rank of 9.15 was in the highest and satisfaction with an average rank of 4.98 in the lowest. Conclusion: Paying attention to the average dimensions and components, which was higher than average, indicates that the professors consider comprehensive patient-centred education suitable for dental education; and the components need to be considered in dental education.