Dental Professional's Knowledge, Preventive Awareness and Attitude Towards COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to assess the dentist's knowledge, preventive awareness, and attitude towards COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to assess dental professionals' knowledge, preventive awareness, and attitude towards dental care during the COVID-19 pandem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Risk management and healthcare policy 2021-01, Vol.14, p.2277-2288
Main Authors: Alwazzan, Rayyan Abdallah, Baseer, Mohammad A, ALMugeiren, Osamah Mohammed, Ingle, Navin Anand
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerosols
attitude
Attitudes
awareness
China
Clinics
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Cross-sectional studies
Dental care
dental professional
Dentistry
Dentists
Disease control
Disease prevention
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Infections
Knowledge
Medical research
Original Research
Pandemics
Patients
Professionals
Questionnaires
Respiratory diseases
Saudi Arabia
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Social networks
Viral infections
Viruses
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Summary:Given the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to assess the dentist's knowledge, preventive awareness, and attitude towards COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to assess dental professionals' knowledge, preventive awareness, and attitude towards dental care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. The study participants consisted of dental professionals working in government, private and academic sectors in Saudi Arabia. An online questionnaire (Whatsapp and Twitter) was sent to dental professionals in July 2020. The questionnaire consisted of questions on dental professional's demographic variables, their knowledge of the incubation period, the symptoms, mode of transmission, preventive awareness of COVID-19, and their attitude toward treating patients with COVID-19. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied to compare mean ranks and a p90% correct responses) of knowledge of COVID-19 except for the infection among comorbid patients 283 (79.5%) and incubation period of COVID-19, 164 (46.1%). An overall high knowledge of COVID-19 (87.26%), preventive awareness (88.64%) and a positive attitude (65.26%) towards dental care were observed among the study participants. The mean knowledge ranks differed significantly in different genders (p=0.029) and marital status (p=0.023), whereas preventive awareness differed significantly across various qualifications (p=0.004). The mean attitude rank was significantly higher among Saudi (182.29) compared to non-Saudi (141.36) study participants (p=0.025). The dental professionals participated in this study demonstrated adequate knowledge of symptoms, preventive awareness, and a positive attitude towards dental care of the COVID-19 infected patients.
ISSN:1179-1594
1179-1594
DOI:10.2147/RMHP.S303858