Dental students' perceptions on using ergonomic principles during pre-clinical training: a qualitative study

Abstract

Dental students experience difficulties related to the acquisition of psychomotor learning and the adoption of ergonomic posture during the beginning of their pre-clinical training. The knowledge of feelings and experiences lived by the students is extremely important for the development of strategies to facilitate the transposition of the initial difficulties, to improve their working posture and to prevent the development of musculoskeletal disorders. Thus, this study aims to observe, in a qualitative way, the perceptions of students of second year of the degree course in dentistry on the application of ergonomic principles during their pre-clinical training. This is an observational cross-sectional, qualitative, with non-probabilistic sampling design. The sample is composed by students of the second years of Dentistry, in Araraquara Dental School. Data collection will be through open interviews and semi-structured individual which will be recorded in digital voice recorder. Students will be interviewed in their own university environment, in time previously scheduled, taking care to provide an environment and welcoming booked to perform the same. There will be a script containing questions related to ergonomics and possible reasons that may hinder the adoption of ergonomic posture during pre-clinical training. Data analysis will be based on qualitative and quantitative technique of the Collective Subject Discourse - CSD and will be performed with the aid of Qualiquantisoft ® which is a computer program that was developed in order to facilitate the analysis of data from qualitative research using the CSD technique. (AU)