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European Archives of Paediatric Dentistry

, Volume 17, Issue 5, pp 387–395 | Cite as

Dental health care providers’ views on child physical abuse in Malaysia

  • A. S. HusseinEmail author
  • R. Ahmad
  • N. Ibrahim
  • A. Yusoff
  • D. Ahmad
Original Scientific Article
First Online:
  • 122 Downloads

Abstract

Aims

To assess the knowledge, attitudes and experience of a group of Malaysian dental health care providers regarding child physical abuse (CPA) cases in terms of frequency of occurrence, diagnosis, risk factors and reporting.

Methods

A questionnaire was distributed to all dental health care providers attending a national paediatric dentistry conference in Kuantan, Malaysia, and demographical variables, knowledge, attitudes and experience about CPA, risk factors and the reasons for not reporting abuse cases were collected. Descriptive statistics and bivariance analysis were performed. A 5 % level of statistical significance was applied for the analyses (p ≤ 0.05).

Results

The response rate was 74.7 %. Half of the respondents (52.8 %) stated that the frequency of occurrence of CPA is common in Malaysia. Full agreement between dental health care providers was not determined concerning the identification of signs of CPA and its risk factors. Although 83.3 % were aware that reporting CPA is a legal requirement in Malaysia, only 14.8 % have reported such cases. Lack of adequate history was the main reason for not reporting. Virtually two-thirds of the respondents (62 %) indicated that they had not received sufficient information about CPA and were willing to be educated on how to diagnose and report child abuse cases (81.5, 78.7 %, respectively).

Conclusions

There were considerable disparities in respondents’ knowledge and attitudes regarding the occurrence, signs of suspected cases, risk factors and reporting of CPA. Despite being aware of such cases, only a handful was reported. Enhancement in the education of Malaysian dental health care providers on recognising and reporting CPA is recommended.

Keywords

Child physical abuse Dental staff Knowledge Malaysia 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the respondents for their participation in this survey. Sincere thanks to the organising Chairman of the conference Dr. Ganasalingam Sockalingam for his support to conduct this study.

Compliance with ethical standards

Funding

This study was NOT funded.

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Copyright information

© European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • A. S. Hussein
    • 1
    Email author
  • R. Ahmad
    • 2
    • 3
  • N. Ibrahim
    • 4
  • A. Yusoff
    • 5
  • D. Ahmad
    • 5
  1. 1.Centre of Paediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics studies, Faculty of DentistryUniversiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)Sg BulohMalaysia
  2. 2.Centre of Restorative Dentistry studies, Faculty of DentistryUniversiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)Sg BulohMalaysia
  3. 3.Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPROMISE)Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)Bandar Puncak AlamMalaysia
  4. 4.Department of Paediatric DentistrySerdang HospitalKajangMalaysia
  5. 5.Faculty of DentistryUniversiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)Sg BulohMalaysia

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