Knowledge attitude and practice of dental students and practitioners during the early days of Covid 19 pandemic in India: a cross sectional study.

Rao, Lakshmi Nidhi; Shetty, Aditya; Latha Senthilkumar, Priyanka; Shetty, Kailkere Shreya; Shetty, Bhavya; Natarajan, Srikant; Rao, Prasanna Kumar; Baliga, Manjeshwar Shrinath

AIM The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is a major health problem and has affected people innumerable number of people around the world. The current online based study was conducted to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of dental students and professionals from during the early days of lockdown in India from April 2nd to May 1st 2020. METHODOLOGY An online cross sectional study was undertaken through WhatsApp Messenger and through email groups among the dental students and professionals. The KAP on COVID-19 was ascertained by using a investigator designed and validated questionnaire. The results were stratified based on student vs professionals. The data was expressed as frequency and percentage analysed using the chi square/Fishers exact test using IBM version 17. A probability value of <0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS A total of 287 complete responses from the dental students and professionals were received. The results indicated that the knowledge of both dental students and professionals were good and that the attitude and practice was in accordance to good clinical practice. No significant differences were found with in the domains of knowledge, attitude, and practice scores among the dental students and practitioners indicating that the study participants were abreast with the recent advances. CONCLUSION The results of this study conducted during the early stage of the lock down indicate that the dental students and professionals who had filled the questionnaire had very good knowledge on corona virus and Covid-19.