Abstract

Introduction: It needs to end this epidemic with a collective effort after 4 decades since the start of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. In this regard, dentists play a vitaland effective role in preventing new infections and improving the health of people with HIV. This study aims to was to determine thelevel of knowledge, attitude, and performance of general dentists on AIDS in Bushehr province. Materials and Methods: This study is a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional research that was conducted in 2017-2018. A questionnaire study was developed in two parts: demographic information and knowledge, attitude and performance questions, and its validity and reliability were checked and confirmed. A total of 106 general dentists in Bushehr province were sampled by the Clusteringmethod. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24 and descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), and inferential statistics (t-test, ANOVA, correlation coefficient, etc.). Findings: In this study, the average score of dentists was 2.37 +/- 2.25 (in the range of 1-3), the average attitude scorewas 2.30 +/- 5.0 (in the range of 1-5), and the average performance score was 2.64 +/- 25.(range 1-3) was obtained. Almost 58.4 did not accept the treatment of HIV-infected patients, even thoughmost dentists believed in the professional and ethical duty to treat HIV-infected patients. There is a positive and significant correlation between the workexperience of a dentist and participation frequency in continuing education courses with the knowledge score of the dentists (P-value of.000 for both cases).In addition, more working hours per week and employment in the private sector had a significant positive relationship with the dentist's attitude (P-value = 0.4 and P-value =.04, respectively).The results of this study did not show a statistically significant relationship between knowledge and attitude, and performance.According to the present study, the attitude of dentists in the field of AIDS was incomplete,and their knowledge and performance were relatively acceptable. Although serious weaknesses were seen in this field, there is a need to review and pay more attention to the policies and plans made, to match the training goals with the needs, review the necessary facilities, and use suitable practical models and training materials.