Indian outreach oral health program and Dentistry students' social representation

Introduction: Outreach program is a very important part of the dentistry course syllabus which allows students to face some actual condition of oral health treatment in different sites out of the University boundaries. One of these Brazilian programs deliveries oral health treatment to native Indians and allows the student of Dentistry to experience an actual treatment facing different culture and working conditions. Objectives: We aimed to evaluate the social representations that dentistry students reported about the experience lived within an outreach program inside a Brazilian Indian Society. Methods: As a quali-quantitative cross-sectional research approach following the Collective Subject Speech method we interviewed, using taped based interviews, all the students selected to the outreach program named HUKA-KATU Project (University of São Paulo/FORP-USP)(n4 0). We used the Qualiquantisoft Software to perform the data base and social representations theories to data analysis. Results: The data analysis showed 4 empirical categories: “taking own decision” (19.0%), “do not think just about the tooth and mouth” (21.0%), “relevance in promoting oral health” (53.0%) and “working in group” (7.0%). All these empirical categories reflected the current Dentist profile which is related to oral health promotion, human holistic view of health care and staff work. Conclusion: We concluded that this outreach program improves the oral heath preventive knowledge, makes the dentistry student think about different values related to oral health care and prepare them to face different situations in their dentistry career.