الفهرس 
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Abstract
Communication can be defined as the process of transmitting information and common understanding from one person to another. The decisive key for a productive patient-doctor relationship is professional communication. In the dental field, knowledge and technical skills are not the only prerequisites for good practice. Evidence from the literature has shown that effective communication not only improves dentist-patient relationships and promotes positive health outcomes, but also enhances the patient’s satisfaction towards the profession, maximizes the use of health care resources and helps reduce patients’ complaints.
Unfortunately, no previous studies were carried out in Egypt to explore neither the attitude of dental students towards learning communication skills, nor the curriculum taught. Thus, the aim of this study was to compare the attitudes of recently graduated dentists in both, the Faculty of Dentistry, Alexandria University (AU) and Pharos University (PU), towards communication skills’ learning, in relation to demographic and education-related characteristics as well as communication skills’ curriculum.
The present research was a cross-sectional, analytical design based on a self-administered, close-ended survey questionnaire. The study included 240 dental interns from AU and 162 dental interns from PU with a response rate accounting for 70.59% and 82.65%, respectively. Questionnaires were distributed and collected from the students in the period from July to October 2014. The adapted version for dental students, the Dental Communication Skills Attitude Scale DCSAS, modified from the original Communication Skills Attitude Scale developed for medical students, was used. Significant differences were expected to be detected between the dental interns’ attitudes towards learning communication skills in both universities.
Results indicated that a number of demographic and education- related variables were found to have significant relationships with scores on the positive (PAS) and negative (NAS) attitude subscales for Alexandria and Pharos dental interns. Older interns and female participants showed more positive attitudes towards communication skills’ learning than younger interns and male participants, respectively. Furthermore, there was no significant relation between neither parents’ level of education nor parents working in health care system and their children’s score on the PAS and NAS subscales except for mother education and NAS of Alexandria interns and father education and NAS of pharos interns. Regarding the relationship between attitudes and education-related variables, receiving previous training in communication skills increased dental interns’ PAS scores and decreased their NAS scores, whereas those who felt their communication skills needed improvement had more positive attitude towards learning communication skills than their counterparts. Despite the differences in communication skills’ curriculum, mean PAS and NAS scores were nearly the same among dental interns, in both universities, showing no statistical significance. In addition, no statistically significant difference was detected between the mean attitude scores of both AU and PU dental interns regarding all the four factors of the DCSAS scale. The greatest percentage of respondents had a positive attitude towards learning and quality factors on one hand, and neutral attitude towards importance and success factors on the other hand. Finally, dental interns of both universities showed an overall neutral and positive attitude towards learning communication skills without significant differences between them.
In Alexandria University, teaching communication skills was only through two lectures as an integral part of the dental public health curriculum for the 4th year dental students. The topic was taught by staff members of dental public health department. In Pharos University, on the other hand, a separate course for communication skills was taught to the second year dental students. The PU course used more didactic teaching hours that accounted for 15 lectures, in addition to various methods of learning, such as oral discussions, impromptu speeches, debates and oral presentations. The course was taught by staff members from business department in the Faculty of Commerce, Alexandria University.
These findings indicate that faculty members should strive to initiate a change in students’ attitudes about communication skills through practical training. It is the future research responsibility to confirm the findings, in the field of education, supporting the fact that communication skills’ teaching and training in the undergraduate years has a strong influence on dentists’ attitudes towards learning such skills.