Evaluation of dental students’ awareness, attitude and perception regarding preventive approaches towards COVID-19: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or COVID-19 has become a major concern for health care professionals. Dentistry, because of the close contact with patients has a high risk of infection in students for this disease. This study aimed to assess dental students’ attitude, and perception regarding the coronavirus disease.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020 on 111 dental students of fourth to sixth year using census method. An online questionnaire from Khader et al. study about awareness of the incubation period, the symptoms of the disease, mode of transmission of COVID-19, infection control measures for preventing COVID-19; and their attitude toward treating patients with COVID-19 was applied. Data were analyzed by SPSS ver.26, t-test and ANOVA. The significance level was set as P-Value≤0.05.

Dental students were aged 21 to 36 years (mean 23.89 years, SD 2.73 years). A total of 90 (81.1%) dental students had received training in infection control in dentistry, and 3 (2.7%) had attended training or lectures regarding COVID-19. The mean scores for awareness and attitude-perception were 33.55±4.19 and 6.23±1.61, respectively. There were no significant differences in the level of awareness and attitude-perception between genders and different academic years.

The findings of the present study showed that dental students’ awareness, attitude and perception towards COVID-19 are at an average level. Therefore, there is an important need for improving dental student in this era via health education and training programs.