ArticleBMC medical education2021
Cultural competence of Australian dental students.
Article in BMC medical education, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Implementing and Delivering Culturally Centred Pharmacy Services Tailored to Ethnically Minoritised Populations: A Qualitative Systematic Review and Meta-Ethnography.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2025Pooled it
- Cultural Competence Among Optometry Students at a South African University: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Perspectives of Oral Health Practitioners Working in Rural New South Wales: Culture, Wellbeing and Workforce Sustainability.Australian dental journal · 2026Article
- Patient Experience of a Student-Led Rural Indigenous Outplacement Dental Clinic.The Australian journal of rural health · 2025Article
- Comparison of Cultural Competence Between Dental House Officers and General Dentists: A Cross-Sectional Study.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Filling the gaps sustainably: an island case study of rural dental workforce challenges.Frontiers in dental medicine · 2025Article
- Self-perceived cultural competence skills among graduating dental students in Saudi Arabia.The Saudi dental journal · 2024Article
- Cultural safety in radiation therapy education: Identifying knowledge deficits to improve Indigenous health practice.Journal of medical radiation sciences · 2024Article
- Effectively teaching cultural competence in a pre-professional healthcare curriculum.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- Identifying methods to best integrate indigenous knowledge and perspectives within the radiation therapy undergraduate curriculum.Journal of medical radiation sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAustralia possesses a highly multicultural demographic, and thus dental practitioners are likely to regularly encounter culturally and linguistically diverse individuals. It is important for dental practitioners to be culturally competent, however, cultural competency education is highly variable in the curricula of dentistry and oral health courses in Australia, and research is largely limited to dentistry students. This study aims to investigate and compare perceived attitudes, beliefs and practices of cultural competence amongst first and final year Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) and Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) students at the University of Melbourne Dental School.
methodsFollowing ethics approval, anonymous questionnaires were completed by 213 participants. The questionnaire was adapted from Schwarz's Healthcare Provider Cultural Competence Instrument and consisted of five scales. Data was analysed using SPSS V 24.0 software.
resultsA total of 213 students participated in this study (response rate = 88%) The majority of participants were female (n = 114, 53.5%) and the mean age of 23.5 years (range 18-40). The majority of participants were Australian born (n = 110) with 74.6% (n = 159) first generation Australians. Participants who identified as Australian represented 35.7% (n = 76) with 66.1% (n = 141) identified as partly Australian. Multivariate analysis indicated that, after controlling for other independent variables in the model, those who had the highest cultural competence score were female, who self-identify as "Australian", who were in the final year. Furthermore, those who were in the final BOH year scored significatively higher than final year DDS students.
conclusionThe findings of this study suggest that there is a significant difference in students self-reported cultural competence at different stages of their education. This may be attributed to differences in cultural competence education, scope of practice and the type of patient encounters and role modelling that students may experience. Future research should involve follow up to create longitudinal data, as well as research at other dental schools in Australia and overseas.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.