Laboratório de Tecnologia Educacional BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL               DE CIÊNCIAS

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the perspective of students in the first year of Dental and Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences School regarding the use of knowledge in Biochemistry for clinical applications in their future career. Two simple questionnaires were elaborated consisting of multiple choice and open questions regarding the Biochemistry discipline. The questionnaires were given to first-year Dental and Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences students at Bauru Dental School, University of São Paulo, at the beginning and the end of their Biochemistry course (2007 and 2008 years). The students answered the questions voluntarily and in an unidentified format. The answers were then divided (multiple choice questions) and the written contents (open questions) evaluated, indicating the students’ opinion with regards to each question. One hundred and fifteen students answered the first questionnaire and one hundred and thirty nine answered the second one. In the great majority of the multiple choice questions, the predominant opinion was that the Biochemistry discipline is important for their future careers (59.0%) as well as for their routine clinical setting (51.1%). We may conclude that students are aware of the importance of the acquired knowledge in Biochemistry for their future career although are not yet capable of defining how such knowledge will be applied.