Effectiveness of educational poster on knowledge of emergency management of dental trauma--part 2: cluster randomised controlled trial for secondary school students.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of educational poster on improving secondary school students' knowledge of emergency management of dental trauma.

Methods: A cluster randomised controlled trial was conducted. 16 schools with total 671 secondary students who can read Chinese or English were randomised into intervention (poster, 8 schools, 364 students) and control groups (8 schools, 305 students) at the school level. Baseline knowledge of dental trauma was obtained by a questionnaire. Poster containing information of dental trauma management was displayed in a classroom for 2 weeks in each school in the intervention group whereas in the control group there was no display of such posters. Students of both groups completed the same questionnaire after 2 weeks.

Results: Two-week display of posters improved the knowledge score by 1.25 (p-value = 0.0407) on average.

Conclusion: Educational poster on dental trauma management significantly improved the level of knowledge of secondary school students in Hong Kong.

Trial Registration: HKClinicalTrial.com HKCTR-1343 ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01809457.