Effect of an educational course at an Iranian dental school on students' knowledge of and attitudes about HIV/AIDS.

This study investigated the effects of an educational program designed to improve the knowledge and attitudes of senior dental students in an Iranian dental school about caring for patients with HIV/AIDS. As part of an extramural program in community dentistry, a new educational program about HIV/AIDS was developed at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2009. The program consisted of two days' observation at the Consultation Center for Behavioral Diseases and a one-day workshop on infection control. A control group was selected from dental students at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Before and after the intervention, students in both the intervention and control groups completed a questionnaire concerning their knowledge of and attitudes about HIV/AIDS. Students in the intervention group also expressed their opinions in a post-test questionnaire. An independent sample t-test was used for statistical analysis. In the control group, the means of students' knowledge and attitude scores did not differ significantly from pre-test to post-test. In the intervention group, however, the means of both knowledge and attitude scores on the post-test were significantly higher than on the pre-test (p=0.001 and p=0.009, respectively). In the intervention group, more than 96 percent of the students reported that they would completely follow infection control principles in future practice. This study concludes that the educational program improved the students' knowledge of and attitudes about HIV/AIDS and will have a positive effect on their future practice.