Although dentists are valuable assets in identification teams during disaster events, forensic dentistry is not used effectively in the identification studies conducted in Turkey, and the importance of dental data is ignored. The aim of this study was to determine the level of knowledge of dentists regarding their duties and responsibilities during major disasters.

This descriptive study was conducted between December 2015 and June 2016. Registered dentists (n=20.280) of the Turkish Dental Association were invited to complete the organization’s online survey. A total of 539 dentists participated in the volunteer workshop. Data were analyzed using SPSS, version 22.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY). The chi-square analysis was used to evaluate the knowledge level of dentists by group regarding disaster victim identification (DVI) – the process and procedure of recovering and identifying victims of major disasters (eg, earthquake, terrorist attack).

The dentists included in the study consisted of 320 (59.4%) females and 219 (40.6%) males with a mean age of 37.4±12.6 years. The number of specialists and general dentists were 249 (45.6%) and 297 (54.4%), respectively; 249 (69.71%) dentists who had knowledge about forensic dentistry stated that they received this information during their formal training. The percentage of dentists who were aware of the existence of an organization of a disaster response operation in Turkey was 74.2%, but only 20.5% (n=110) had knowledge about DVI. We found that 92.9% (n=104) of these dentists believed that dentists should be included in the team for the identification of disaster victims. On the other hand, only half (52.3%) of the dentists with knowledge of DVI wanted to work on the identification teams. The majority (99.1%) considered DNA analysis to be the safest method for identification.

Our findings show that, although dentists know about the identification process, they do not have enough relevant knowledge. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:533-538)