Ansiedade dos estudantes de graduação em odontologia durante o atendimento clínico

Abstract

Brazil has the largest number of anxious people in the world, representing 9.3% of the population living with the disorder. Excessive anxiety can affect learning, critical thinking, and clinical performance. In the academic environment, many studies show that the dental student is exposed to many stressful situations and at higher levels than the general population. This research aims to identify the anxiety levels of students in the Dentistry course from the 5th to the 10th semester of the Federal University of Ceará - Campus Fortaleza during clinical care. The collected data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software, adopting 95% confidence. The averages and standard deviations of the items from DASS-21 and its domains were calculated, as well as Cronbach's alpha value considering “item-to-item” and “domain-to-domain” and if items and domains were excluded of the construct. The Friedman / Dunn test was used to compare the means of the three DASS-21 domains. The stress score was significantly higher than the anxiety score and both were higher than the depression score (p < 0.001). Despite this, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of different levels of anxiety, stress or depression in the sample studied, nor any difference between the different levels of graduation. However, the female sex presented 5 times more prevalence of stress (p = 0,019). Finally, it is worth mentioning that different levels of Anxiety, Depression and Stress were noticeable in a high proportion of students. Despite good findings, further studies with a larger number of students and comparisons between universities are still needed to further observation and analysis of new factors observed.