Identification of sociocultural factors influencing the provision of dental care to international students

Aim: to identify sociocultural factors influencing the providing of dental care to foreign students. Material and methods. A survey was conducted among 160 foreign students, the average age was 23,0 years (18÷36), among them 72 were men (45,0 %) and 88 were women (55,0 %). An anonymous questionnaire was provided in paper form in English. The analysis of dependencies was carried out using the Pearson chi-square criterion. Results. the presence of restrictions on taking med-ications during religious fasting was revealed in 122 people (75,8 %), as well as the evaluation of the im-portance of gender when choosing a dentist showed that gender is important for 60 people (42,2 %). The change in the number of students who answered that they have restrictions on taking medications during re-ligious fasting from one year of education to other was statistically significant (p = 0,005). In pairwise compar-ison we obtained a significant decrease in the number of students who answered that they have restrictions on taking medications during lent, from the second to the third year of study. When assessing the importance of gender when choosing a dentist, we found that the number of answers “the doctor’s gender does not mat-ter” increases from the second to the fifth year. The increase in the number of answers is significant both in the overall assessment (total p < 0,001) and in pairwise comparison of the 2nd year with each of the courses (for each pair p < 0,001). Conclusion. Improving dental care through the de-velopment of patient-oriented approaches taking into account socio-cultural factors will help increase the commitment of foreign students to dental treatment, and therefore help maintain and improve oral health dur-ing their stay in the Russia.