Background and Aims: Oral health care is often overlooked as part of a healthy lifestyle. The state of one’s dental or oral health is determined by a variety of factors, including personal knowledge, traits, actions, and perceptions. It is crucial to be aware of health practices for maintaining standard oral health based on patients’ perceptions of oral health care. The goal of this study was to determine how well health sciences students at Majmaah University in Saudi Arabia knew about oral hygiene.
Methods: This is a cross sectional study and the samples were obtained from health sciences students at Majmaah university in the period of October 2019 to April 2020. To know oral health knowledge, attitude, habits, and self-opinion of one’s own dental appearance, a self-structured questionnaire was employed. SPSS software was used to examine the data.
Results: 36.1% of students are of the opinion that a regular visit to dentist is necessary. 91.6% of students think that as with any part of the body, teeth require care. 50% of female students were having a good knowledge about the oral health while were 12.9% of male were having a good knowledge. Most of dental students were having good knowledge (61.1%) while medical students was having moderate knowledge (43%) and the applied science students (75%) were having poor knowledge. (50.7%) of the students are not afraid from dental instrument and procedures. Also (30.8%) of the students prefer taking sedative while they go to dentist. 54.2% are happy with their tooth shape, and 52.4% are happy with their tooth color and 60.8% like their smile.
Conclusions: Dental students have a greater level of oral health awareness than medical and applied science students, according to the findings of this study. This could be because they include a similar theme on oral health in their curriculum, whereas these specialist themes may not be there in other programs.
Key words: Oral health, oral hygiene, knowledge, students, perception
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