Assessing knowledge, attitude, practice, and risk perception towards covid-19, among dental students in southern iran

Aims: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), affecting a large number of people worldwide, has been declared as a public health emergency. The goal of this study was to assess the Knowledge, Attitude, Practice (KAP), and risk perception of dental care during the covid-19 among dental students. Methods: An online questionnaire was sent to 4th-6th-year dental students. The questionnaire was divided into 5 sections. The first part contained questions regarding demographic information, whereas the other sections each assessed knowledge (18 questions), attitudes (5 questions), practices (7 questions), and risk perception (2 questions) of dental students. Findings: Among 314 participants, 69.43% were female. The mean scores for Knowledge, Attitude, Practice and Risk Perception were 70.06 ± 8.95 (range: 0-100), 8.86 ± 1.70 (range: 5-15), 5.59 ± 1.86 (range: 0-7) and 4.72 ± 1.92 (range: 2-6), respectively. The mean knowledge score was not significantly different across gender (P≥ 0.05), females had a lower attitude score (P= 0.017) while their practice score was significantly higher (P=0.009). Based on the linear regression results, higher scores of risk perception were associated with gender (female vs. male: B=0.653, P=0.001). A significant positive correlation was found between practice and risk perception (r=0.215, p=0.007). Moreover a negative correlation between attitude and risk perception (r=-0.192, p=0.016). Conclusions: This study revealed that the overall scores of KAP among the dental students were good, however, their knowledge about the extra precautionary measures requires further educations.