Evaluation of knowledge, attitude and practice of community pharmacists in Tehran about oral and dental healthcare and related products

One of the major objectives of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of community pharmacists in Tehran about oral and dental healthcare and related products. To assess the knowledge and attitude, a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by experts and pharmacists familiar with the subject with a reliability that was respectively confirmed using Cronbach s alpha higher than 0.6 (0.792) was used. To assess the performance, pre-designed scenarios confirmed by several pharmacist professors was used. 200 pharmacists, 55% men and 45% women with an average age of 37.59 years participated in this study. The required information was collected in September of the year 1395 to April of the year 1396. The results of this research show that the knowledge and practice of community pharmacists about oral and dental healthcare and related products are near to poor. However, considering their attitude, most pharmacists in this study admitted that the knowledge of pharmacists due to lack of sufficient trainings in pharmacy courses is not enough and they would be happy with taking retraining courses. Also, in examining the relationship between demographic indicators and the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacists, there is a significant relationship between the level of experience and performance ensuing a decrease in the practice level by an increase in the experience. It is worth noting founder pharmacists had weaker practice. As the final result, it can be said that the level of knowledge and practice standards of pharmacists in the field of oral and dental healthcare is not desirable, and this suggests the need for more education in them. As a result, carrying out improvement in pharmacists training courses in this field may hopefully promote public health.

کلیدواژه ها:

oral healthcare ، knowledge ، attitude ، practice