Knowledge, attitude and practice towards droplet and airborne isolation precautions among dental health care professionals in Shiraz, Iran

Objective: To determine the level of knowledge, attitude and practice among Iranian dental health care professionals towards droplet and airborne isolation precautions, in Shiraz, Iran. Methods: A survey was developed and distributed to 152 Iranian dental professionals (faculty and students) from Shiraz University School of Medical Sciences, School of Dentistry, Shiraz, Iran. The self-administered questionnaire was composed of three parts (knowledge, attitude, and practice). After validation of the survey using the Kuder Richardson reliability test and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient, data was collected and analyzed using Analysis of Variance and the Duncan test to detect the differences among groups. The Spearman coefficient was used to determine the correlation between knowledge, attitude, and practice. Results: The survey was completed by 152 (51.5%) of 295 potential respondents. Mean scores of knowledge, attitude, and practice towards droplets and airborne isolation precautions were poor (98 3.45, 10.51 6.26, 2.68 3.16 from the maximum scores of 11, 55, and 11, respectively). In addition, a positive linear correlation was found between two items of the survey including knowledge-attitude (rho = 0.438, p < 0.001), knowledge and practice (rho = 0.380, p <0.001). Conclusion: Iranian dental professionals seemed to have low levels of knowledge, attitude and practice towards infection control.