An assessment of pharmacy students’ knowledge, attitude, and practice toward oral health: An exploratory study

BACKGROUND: Community pharmacies are now frequently being visited by customers/patients to seek oral advice. Malaysian community pharmacists are also found to be experiencing an increased demand of oral health advices by their visiting customers. AIMS/OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to explore the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the final year Bachelor of Pharmacy students in a private university toward oral health, as these students will be the future pharmacists. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was carried out among final year undergraduate pharmacy students by using self-administered questionnaire. It was conducted as a classroom survey. Raosoft software was used to determine the minimum required sample size. RESULTS: The demographic distribution of the respondents was separated into gender, ethnicity, and state of origin. Over 83.8% of the participants were females, with Chinese ethnicity dominating (78.4%) compared to others, and the distribution showed 11 different states of origin. CONCLUSIONS: This research finding shows that pharmacy students have positive attitude toward oral health despite having poor knowledge and mediocre practice principles regarding oral health.