Tehran dentists' self-reported knowledge and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS and observed willingness to treat simulated HIV-positive patients
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Abstract
Dentists' self-reported attitudes towards patients with HIV/AIDS might not reflect their actual behaviour. In this study 2 observers posed as HIV-positive patients and directly evaluated the behaviour of 300 dentists in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran. Two months later another observer interviewed the same dentists at their offices regarding AIDS-related knowledge and self-reported attitudes. Only 14.9% of dentists agreed to treat the simulated HIV-positive patients, 78.5% referred and 6.6% rejected them. Older age, longer work experience, graduation from a non-Iranian university and not having additional degrees were significantly related to adverse behaviours. Mean scores were 8.3 [SD 9.7] [out of 18] for knowledge and 17.5 [SD 7.1] [out of 39] for attitude. There were no significant correlations between dentists' knowledge and attitude or between knowledge and behaviour, but there was a weak positive correlation between self-reported attitude and observed behaviourCitation
Khosravanifard, B., Rakhshan, V., Ghasemi, M., Pakdel, A., Baradaran-Eghbal, S. et al. (2012). Tehran dentists' self-reported knowledge and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS and observed willingness to treat simulated HIV-positive patients. EMHJ - Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 18 (9), 928 - 934, 2012 https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/118514