Attitudes towards profesionalism among undergraduate and post graduate dental students

Objectives: To assess the perceptions and attitude of under and postgraduate dental students toward professionalism in Peshawar. Materials and Methods: This Descriptive cross sectional was conducted at Khyber College of Dentistry (KCD), Rehman college of Dentistry (RCD) and Sardar Begum Dental College (SBDC) Peshawar.:Third year and fi nal year BDS students and postgraduate dental residents were asked to complete a specially designed proforma validated by 32 experts. Likert Scale was used for scoring the diff erent domains of professionalism. The SPSS 23 was used for analyzing the data. Results: A total number of students participated in the study were158. The most appreciated and valued domain selected by the student was Honor and Integrity. Duty/Accountability was the least valued domain scored by the participants. A signifi cant diff erence was noted among the attitude of undergraduate and postgraduate students in the domains of Duty/Accountability, Excellence/Autonomy, Altruism and Respect. The mean score for Excellence/Autonomy domain was significantly higher among public sector institutes as compared to private one (p=0.008). Conclusion: Knowledge of professionalism in most of our study participants is not optimal, reflecting lack of behavioral sciences in the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, which recommend provision of ethics course in the dental curriculum.