Longitudinal integration of environmental sustainability in the dental curriculum: assessing changes in student awareness, attitudes and knowledge

AIMS: (i) To implement an education strategy to embed environmental sustainability across all years of an undergraduate dental curriculum and (ii) to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy through changes in students' awareness, attitudes and knowledge of environmental sustainability in dentistry.

METHODS: Four environmental sustainability teaching interventions were delivered across all five years of an undergraduate dentistry programme. A pre-tested survey was administered to students at baseline and post-intervention to evaluate changes in awareness, attitudes and knowledge of environmental sustainability in dentistry (ESD).

RESULTS: A total of 270 matched participants were included in the final comparative analyses, representing a response rate of 69%. Statistically significant and positive changes in awareness of ESD (p<.001), attitudes towards ESD (p=.011), general pro-environmental attitudes (p<.001) and knowledge of ESD(p<.001) were observed from baseline to post-intervention. Analysis of the influence of the year of the study demonstrated the effectiveness of the different teaching interventions, with significant differences noted for awareness of ESD (p<.001), general pro-environmental attitudes (p=.022) and knowledge of ESD (p=.001) between year groups from baseline to post-intervention.

CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a real-world example of how ES can be longitudinally embedded across the dental curriculum. The effectiveness of this approach has been confirmed through an assessment of the change in awareness of ESD, attitudes towards ESD, the extent to which implementing ESD is easy, general pro-environmental attitudes and knowledge of ESD before and after the curriculum initiative. Significant positive changes were noted for all outcome measures except the extent to which implementing ESD is easy. The most significant changes were noted for awareness of ESD and knowledge of ESD across all years of study.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Oral healthcare has a significant environmental impact, the key to all mitigation strategies is by educating the profession at all levels.