Dental Students' Perceptions Regarding Bioterrorism; a Cross-Sectional Study

During the COVID-19 outbreak, dental professionals have demonstrated their importance in combatingmass casualty incidents. This study aimed to understand dental students’ perceptions of their potential roles in a bioter-rorism attack.

This cross-sectional study used a self-administered anonymous questionnaire, which was sentto all dental students and interns at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. Bivariate and multiple linear regressionanalyses were conducted to assess dental students’ willingness to provide care during a bioterrorism attack, knowledgeregarding bioterrorism and total number of roles a dentist should play during an attack.

This study included472 dental students and interns. The mean knowledge score regarding bioterrorism was 3.3 ± 1.9 out of 5. A large ma-jority of the respondents (83.8%) were willing to provide care during a bioterrorism attack. Students with a cumulativegrade point average (GPA) of 4.5–5 were more likely to indicate that a dental professional should take on more roles dur-ing a bioterrorism attack than those with a GPA of 2.5–2.99. Fourth- and fifth-year dental students had lower knowledgescores regarding bioterrorism than dental interns (B: -0.71; SE: 0.30; 95% CI: -1.3—0.1 and B: -0.68; SE: 0.30; 95% CI: -1.3–-0.1, respectively).

Despite the fact that dental curricula do not cover topics related to bioterrorism, moststudents would be willing to provide care under bioterrorism conditions. There is wide agreement among the studentsregarding the need to add bioterrorism-related educations to dental curricula.