Oral Health Knowledge and Attitude among Primary School Teachers of Madinah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background and objective: Effect of oral health knowledge and attitude has direct effect on school children so aim of this study is to know the oral health knowledge and attitude among primary school teachers. Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional questionnaire based survey done in 2014. Four males and three females schools were selected using a convenience sampling method. Among them, three were private and the rest was government schools. Approval was obtained from the selected schools. One hundred twenty self-administered questionnaires in Arabic language were distributed among the primary school teachers. Results: Completed questionnaires were returned with a response rate of 95%. Among the teachers, 57% were males and rests were females. The mean age was 36.1 years (SD ± 6.9). Sixty-eight percent were between 31 and 40 years old and among them female showed high score for oral health knowledge (80%) p<0.001 whereas male showed high score of attitude (82%) p<0.05. Thirty-three percent had 5 and 10 years of teaching experience. Ninety-eight percent were graduate or above. Eighty-nine percent had used toothbrush. There was no significant relation between the teaching experience and the oral health knowledge (p = 0.14) but there was a significant relation between teaching experience and attitude (p = 0.001). In this sample, irrespective of their frequency of tooth brushing, a significant number had good knowledge (p<0.001) and highly acceptable attitudes (p = 0.001) toward oral health. Conclusion: Primary school teachers had acceptable knowledge and attitudes regarding their oral health. Further studies are needed to evaluate and compare their oral health status to their knowledge and attitudes and to determine whether they offer oral health education to the school children.