Knowledge of dental students toward HIV/AIDS and its transmission

Although worldwide prevention and community information about AIDS has been developed in recent decades, it is still considered as a problem for public health. Dental students are at increased risk for HIV infection because of overutilization and unsafe injections during surgery or other procedures. Knowledge of dental students about HIV infection and its transmission ways is an important subject in health care system. The purpose of current study was to evaluate knowledge of dental students of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences. This was a cross sectional study carried out among all of the dental students of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS) in 2012-2013. A questionnaire containing demographic question (age, gender) and 20 questions (7 general questions and 13 specialized questions ) about knowledge toward HIV/AIDS was distributed among the participants. Data was analyzed by frequency, one way t-test, chi-square and spearman correlation test using the SPSS (V.19). The significant level was set as < 0.05. Totally 78 student participated in this study. The mean age of participants was 21.44 ± 2.54. Forty five (57.7%) were preclinical students. The mean score of questionnaires was 52.38 ± 4. This score among preclinical students was 52.28 ± 4.2 and in clinical students was 52.92 ± 3.4.There was no significant difference between total scores of respondents among clinical and preclinical students (P > 0.05). Only two students (2.5%) got below 41 points (poor knowledge). Fifteen students had achieved between 41 to 50 points (moderate knowledge) and the remains (N = 61, p = 78.2%) achieved higher than 51 points (good knowledge). Although, the knowledge of dental students was high, they didn’t have enough knowledge about post exposure prophylaxis which is an important subject and any oral health worker may experience it in their professional life. Educating health care workers especially dental students regarding the prophylaxis strategies in preclinical course is recommended.