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Background: Internet Addiction and phubbing are prevalent disruptive behaviours among students. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between phubbing, smartphone addiction and some of the related psychological effects among dental undergraduates., Materials and Methods: A multi-centric cross-sectional pre-validated questionnaire-based study was conducted among undergraduate students of five different dental colleges across India. The questionnaire included the Phubbing Scale, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS), Smartphone Application-based Addiction Scale (SABAS), and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES). The data were analysed with IBM SPSS version 21, followed by a t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Spearmen's co-relation to find the association between different psychological variables among study subjects., Results: The total sample comprise of 1226 with mean age of 22.35. The SABAS showed a higher mean ± standard deviation (SD) score (3.17 ± 0.93). The Phubbing Scale showed a positive correlation with the SABAS (0.658), the results were found to be highly statistically significant (P = 0.01)., Conclusion: The present study found a higher prevalence of phubbing and smartphone addiction among dental students. Our results showed that impulsiveness leads to internet addiction and thus phubbing is becoming a way to find solace during communication to escape anxiety and distress., (Copyright © 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Indian Journal of Dental Research.)

Introduction: World Health Organization oral health assessment forms (2013) are the standard method to record the information regarding oral health among children and adults. Conventional paper forms are still being used and data are entered in digital form manually for further statistical analysis, which causes duplication, errors, and extra time consumption. Hence, the aim of present study was to conduct a usability evaluation of the novel offline Paperless Electronic Data Entry System (PEDES) and compare it with the manual entry method (MEM) for the World Health Organization oral health assessment form (2013) for adults., Materials and Method: A total of 186 participants were enrolled for the study as recorders. Usability evaluation was assessed using a user experience questionnaire (UEQ). Each participant used manual and electronic data entry to work through five documented tasks. The usability of the paperless entry system was evaluated with the UEQ tool., Results: Time taken to complete adult form was less for PEDES as compared to MEM (P < .001). UEQ scores for all scales under attractiveness, pragmatic, and hedonic quality were found to be good with a value more than 0.8. Comparison of the task completion among PEDES and MEM for the different task assigned under different domains showed statistically significant differences (P < .05)., Conclusion: The study strongly recommends the usage of this novel technique in future, so that labour-intensive manual data entry can be replaced with a more effective method. Being offline system, it has an additional edge with no requirement of active internet to record or store the data., Competing Interests: None

Background: Empathy plays an important role in healthy dentist and patient relationship. Hence, the aim of the study is to (a) to measure the self-reported empathy levels among dental undergraduate and postgraduate students. (b) To review the trend of changes in empathy level with experience, age, and gender among dental undergraduate and postgraduate students., Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study was carried out in two private dental institutions situated in Sri Ganganagar, India, with a sample size of 978. Data were obtained from the 1 st to final year (BDS), interns, and postgraduate students from January to March 2015. An empathy level of students was assessed by the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy - Health Profession Students Version Questionnaire. An exploratory factor analysis using Kaiser's criteria was undertaken to appraise the construct validity and dimensionality. Based on the results of the factor analysis, three factors were selected; labeled as perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in patient's shoes., Results: The majority of the students was female in a equivalent  ratio of 1338:618. There were significant differences in empathy scores by gender and age ( P < 0.01). The lowest and highest mean empathy scores were found in postgraduate (mean = 108.77, standard deviation [SD] =9.12) and 1 st year (mean = 117.23, SD = 14.19) dental students, respectively., Conclusion: Dental educators should consider the likely decline in empathy among students as early as possible and adopt communication teaching strategies to promote the development of empathy and reduce the risk of further decline.