Introduction: Exposure to blood-borne pathogens poses a serious risk to health care providers . Healthcare workers are three to six times more likely than the general public to catch bloodborne viruses. Dental health-care providers are under significant risk, since the treatment usually requires intrusive procedures. So, poor adherence to standard precautions, represent the main causes that pose a critical risk of infection in dental practice. Despite the fact that universities are the primary source of infection control instruction for future dentists, research in the Middle East has revealed that awareness of infection control among dental students as well as some of the teaching staff is poor. In Egypt, Researches discussing Knowledge, attitudes and practice of infection control among students don't cover all aspects. So that This study was performed at faculty of dentistry Al Ahram Canadian University (ACU). Materials and methods: A questionnaire was developed to probe the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of infection control. The pre-structured self-administered online questionnaire was sent to level 4 and 5 students (749) using Microsoft Teams. Data management and statistical analysis were performed using spss v. 18. P-values ≤0.05 were considered significant.
Results: Responders to the questionnaire were 98 students in level 4 and 172 students in level 5 with a total of 270 students (36% response level). Regarding the total score for all Knowledge questions, level 4 recorded a slightly higher mean value (21.28±5.44), in comparison to level 5 (20.02±5.47), with no significant difference between groups (p=0.069). Regarding the total score for the 24 practice questions, level 4 recorded a slightly higher mean value (21.28±5.44), in comparison to level 5 (20.02±5.47), with no significant difference between groups (p=0.069). Regarding the total score for the 5 attitude questions, level 4 recorded a slightly higher mean value (4.60±1.03), in comparison to level 5 (4.46±1.19), with no significant difference between groups (p=0.32) .
Conclusion: from the results of the study, we can conclude that students at level 4 showed slightly higher knowledge, attitude, and dental practice than their colleagues at 5 level. However, knowledge is low for both levels except for hand hygiene among students at level 4. Students' attitudes are satisfactory for both groups, except their attitudes toward the cost-effectiveness of infection control. While instruments processing and personal protective equipments practices are generally acceptable for both levels