Journal of Dental Medicine

Background and Aim: School health workers have an important role in education and prevention of common oral and dental diseases. An organized program can be helpful in training and shaping the proper behavior. This study has evaluated the knowledge, attitude and practice of schools health workers in Tabriz about oral and dental health in 2007-2008.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional and descriptive study was performed in primary schools in Tabriz. Questionnaires were sent to the schools that had health workers. Levels of the knowledge, attitude and practice of the health workers who had answered this questionnaire were evaluated. SPSS software and independent T-Test and Paired- Sample T-Test were used for analyzing the results.
Results: Fifty eight out of 64 school health workers were women. Mean age of school health workers was 45 years. Forty four of school health workers had passed special course about oral health and dental health. 49 of them had passed special educational course the mean of acquired knowledge score was 6.77 out of 10 and women's scores were significantly higher. Also women had more work experience than men. The mean of acquired attitude and practice scores were 7.42 and 7.14 out of 10, respectively.
Conclusion: Findings show that performing of the educational courses during work and experience has an effective role in the scales of the health workers. Progress in this situation can be achieved by retraining programs and accessible pamphlets.

Background and Aim: In recent decades many guidelines has been conducted by radiation protection organizations about radiation protection in dentistry. This study was designed to evaluate the observance of these guidelines in educational clinics of all dental schools in Iran.
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study a questionnaire based on National Radiation Protection guidelines was conducted. The questionnaire consisted of questions about radiation protection principles in dental radiography that is needed for patients and personnel protection and quality control of radiological instruments. The questionnaires were completed by the responsible person of each radiology department of dental schools (18 schools). After gathering the data, the results were compared with radiation protection standards.
Results: There was proper condition in the case of the existence of radiation protection facilities, such as lead apron, thyroid shield and lead impacted walls. However, personnel rarely use these facilities. Usage of high speed films and existence of automatic processor in dental schools was an appreciable point. The main problem was related to the lack of regular quality control programs.
Conclusion: The observance of radiation protection regulations in radiology departments of dental schools was proper. But majority of departments had no regular quality control programs and the use of digital systems in dental radiography was not common.

Background and Aims: One of the major challenges in dental practice is dental complaints that majority of complaints resulted in criminal prosecution and the legal practitioners. The aim of this study was to investigate the patients’ complaints on the diagnosis and treatment plan, dentist’s behavior, treatment charge, and management unlike the behavior of medical affairs, lack of enforcement in Tehran Medical Council between 2005-2011.

Materials and Methods: We referred to the Medical Council in order to obtain permission for evaluating complaints of dentists in Tehran. All files in units of prosecutors, magistrates and judicial committee were evaluated. Data were analyzed using spss version16 software.

Results: The results showed that the highest percentage of complaints was related to the how treatment was managed (41.7%) and the lowest percentage of complaints were about the dentist's diagnosis and treatment plan (2.9%).

Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, with dentists’ awareness of the existing rules and strict supervision, occurrence of complaints on the dental treatment can be prevented.