Siti Sarah Ayub, Mohd Zulkarnain Sinor, Basaruddin Ahmad and Norazlinaliana Ibrahim
The purpose of the present study was to assess the compliance of infection control practice among clinical dental students. We used an audit checklist observing dental students in this cross-sectional study involving 80 4th and 5th year dental students at the School of Dental Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. The audit checklist comprised 5 items before treatment, 20 during treatment and 11 after the treatment procedure. Data were analysed with an SPSS IBM version 24 and a comparison was made using the t-test. A P-value <0.05 was considered significant. The mean compliance percentage toward practice was 90.3% (+6.3). Overall, 95.1% of the students had been complying before treatment, 88.7% during treatment and 90% after the treatment procedure. The most non-compliance practices observed were not washing the hands before treatment (56.2%), not wearing PPE and heavy-duty gloves during cleaning procedures (60%) and touching other parts of the body while wearing gloves (20%). Female students and year 4 students are more complying with practicing infection control (p<0.05). The percentage of students comply towards infection control practice was high, but the findings highlight the needs of continued infection control education and monitoring in practices regarding infection control among dental students at the School of Dental Sciences, University Sains Malaysia. Keywords: Infection control practice; Dental students; Audit
