O OLHAR DE DISCENTES DE ODONTOLOGIA DA UFPA EM RELAÇÃO À ODONTOLOGIA LEGAL

Abstract

Forensic Dentistry (FD) can be defined as a set of technical, scientific, ethical and legal dental knowledge. Even disseminated since 1932, when it was included in the Brazilian curricular matrices, Forensic Dentistry is still not so priorized by students in relation to academic and professional life. Thus, the research aimed to evaluate the level of knowledge of dental students at the beginning of the Dentistry course at Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) in relation to the sphere of FD and your importance in society. For data collection, was applied, via Google Forms, a questionnaire with questions related to FD to students from the 1st to the 3rd semesters.of  UFPA’s Dentistry course. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistical analysis using Jamovi software. 144 students responded to survey.The majority of students were women (n = 89, 61,8%), with a statistically significant difference in age between semesters. (p=0.002).  The majority of the students attended secondary school exclusively in public schools (n = 95, 65,9%) in the city of Belém (n = 74, 51,4%). The most FD-related media consumed were movies (n= 120, 83.3%), social networking (n=113, 78.5%), and series (n= 111, 77.1%). The topics related to human identification, estimating gender and age, acting in cases of domestic violence, sexual abuse and dental forensics were answered correctly by the majority of students, with no statistically significant difference between the three semesters.  Questions related to cheiloscopy (p = 0.025) and palatoscopy (p = 0.032) in criminal investigation indicated a statistically significant difference between semesters. The study shows that students' prior knowledge of the FD subject is satisfactory for the first semesters and that their level of education (semester of the course) does not interfere with their understanding of the subject.