Conocimientos en salud bucal de docentes de primaria de dos instituciones educativas. Bucaramanga, Colombia.

Abstract

The knowledge of primary school teachers about oral health has a great influence on the formation of habits and behaviors that children have for their lives. To determine the level of oral health knowledge of primary school teachers of two public and private educational institutions in Bucaramanga, Colombia. An observational, analytical, cross-sectional study was carried out. The instrument applied in the study conducted by María Casilda Flores and collaborators at the Inca Garcilaso De La Vega University in 2018 was adapted, which consisted of 21 questions which were validated by expert judgment and have been written according to the investigated domains. A deficient level of knowledge was established as the scores between 0 and 7, a regular level between 8 and 14 and a high level of scores between 15 and 21. In the statistical analysis, summary measures were applied according to the nature of the variables; the bivariate analysis included Chi2 test and Fisher's exact test for qualitative variables and for quantitative variables with the Shapiro Wilk normality test, and no statistical significance was considered for those P-values. A total of 73.0% (19) of the respondents presented studies prior to undergraduate studies and 38.46% (10) had work experience of 20 or more years. According to the results obtained, 57.6% of the teachers have a high level of knowledge and 42.3% have regular knowledge; it is evident that no teacher has a low performance. The teachers presented a good level of knowledge of the topics asked about, where it was observed that the more studies and work experience they have, the greater their knowledge.