Prevalence of Covid-19 Fear Among First Year Dental Students in a Private Dental Institution in Chennai City: Cross Sectional Study
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Abstract
Background: Covid-19 pandemic has affected everyone’s life and especially oral healthcare delivery due to lockdown. The objective of this study was to investigate the fear of COVID-19 among first year dental students in chennai city.
Materials and methods: Convenient sampling was employed and all were invited to participate in the survey. The fear of covid-19 infection was found using fear of COVID-19 scale. It is a seven-item questionnaire with responses rated on a five-item scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree and it was circulated using google forms to 1st year dental students in chennai city. The statistical analysis was done by using SPSS software version 23. The significant value was at less than 0.05
Results:
The fear of coronavirus was high among male and females in our study and similar results were found between the age group 18 and 20 years. However, the mean difference in scores between two age groups (18 and 20 years) and between males and females were not significant when analyzed using unpaired or independent student T tests.
Conclusion: Fear of covid-19 among 1st year dental students is significantly low. The present study has some limitations because it is confined to single dental college. The further study on a larger scale of dental students is recommended to know the fear of covid-19.