Knowledge, attitude and health behavior of dental students towards HIV patients

Background: HIV/AIDS had profoundly affected every aspect of the health sector. Most importantly doctor’s attitude of avoiding treatment of HIV patients is mainly due to their apprehensions caused by their lack of understanding of the disease and its modes of transmission. Aims and objective: To investigate a group of dental students’ knowledge about HIV infection, attitudes towards treating HIV/AIDS patients and behaviour practices. Materials and methods: study population consisted of 150 dental students from College of Dental Science and Research Center, Bopal, Ahmedabad. who were treating patients in the clinics of the college. The survey instrument was a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. Result: Mean age of the study population is 20.5 yrs. According to them most common modes of transmission – sexual transmission and contaminated blood transfusion. Preventive measures are use of condom and safe blood transfusion and common oral manifestation are Candidiasis, Apthous ulcer, Hairy leukoplakia. Range of score is 0-13. Mean score of knowledge regarding general and dental aspects was 9.73 and 5.08 respectively. Difference between two is statistically significant. Most of them were using gloves and mask but not using protective eye wear as Universal Work Precautions. Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of teaching the dental students on various aspects of the disease. Universal Work Precautions implementation should be emphasized at an early level of their curriculum and reinforced from time to time.