Survey of dental students’ HIV-related attitudes, knowledge and practices

The EDSA research program aims to study the HIV-related knowledge, attitudes and practice of European Dental Students (EDS), to examine their self-reported compliance towards cross-infection control measures, and to determine sociocultural differences regarding the acceptance of seropositive patients. The project was initiated during the proceedings of the 33rd EDSA Meeting, in Santiago de Compostella of Spain, in September of 2003.

An closed-type survey questionnaire was administered to dental students in clinical years of study, in different European faculties (ACTA-Amsterdam-The Nederlands, Athens Dental School-Greece, Cluj-Napoca Dental School-Romania, Ljubljana- Slovenia). Several comparisons was performed among different schools in order to assess the students’  knowledge of HIV-related oral pathological entities, and pinpoint other significant differentiations.

Many EDS’s are concerned about providing care for patients with HIV/AIDS. Their reluctance of providing care for these patients is a matter of concern, primarily because they are and will be the health care providers who can contribute to an early diagnosis of an HIV infection by identifying oral manifestations strongly related to it, like Kaposi sarcoma, Oral hairy leukoplakia, necrotizing periodontitis, etc. It is therefore, important to examine their views about treatment.

EDSA chose the HIV survey because some aspects are controversial, especially when it comes to treating HIV patients. Some people think that a dentist may choose not to provide treatment, but others claim that it's their moral/professional duty. Professional obligations are not necessarily absolute, as they do not always determine what we ought to do; other obligations can sometimes outweigh them.

» Preliminary report, including results from Athens School of Dentistry

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