Dental records from the perspective of dentistry students

Introduction: Dental records are essential for treatment planning because they collect all relevant information of the patient, besides serving as legal evidence in civil, criminal, ethical and administrative processes and post-mortemidentification. The correct completion and keeping of all forensic dental documentation must continue throughout the undergraduate course and professional life.Objective: To evaluate the perception of dental students, on dental records, their composition and importance.Material and method: It is a descriptive cross-sectional observational survey, in which questionnaires were administered to undergraduate students from the 4th to the 10th semester of a Dentistry Course, at a public University, in the inland of the state of Bahia - Brazil - during the first semester of 2013.Result: Of the 142 interviewed students, 105 participated in the survey; most recognize the documents that should compose the dental records, 98.10% use the manuscript chart, 33.33% state that the keeping time of the records should be ad eternum. The students identify the importance of the records in 93.33% for ethical processes, 97.15% in human identification cases and lawsuits. They request the signature of the patient for the anamnesis' responses in 85.71% and demonstrate ignorance of its importance in other documents that make up the records.Conclusion: It is clear that most of the dental students are unaware about the right keeping time and the need of signing the additional documents.