Introduction

As future healthcare providers, medical students should instruct patients on preventing oral and dental diseases, and refer them to dental specialists.

Objectives

The study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and behavior on oral healthcare among medical students in Iran.

Material and methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2021, and included 260 medical students from medical schools in Iran (23 universities) using a convenience sampling method. After obtaining consent, respondents completed an online questionnaire. All data were classified for each of the questions, and analyzed using independent sample t-test, Pearson’s correlation test, and path analysis.

Results

The final study sample comprised 260 completed surveys from 519 distributed questionnaires. Almost half of the respondents (49.6%) showed good knowledge on oral health, while under half (40.4%) reported a reason­able level of oral health behavior. Most of the participants (89.6%) presented a positive attitude towards oral health. There was a significant association between the scores for attitude and behavior (r = 0.25, p < 0.001), attitude and knowledge (r = 0.35, p < 0.001), and behavior and knowledge (r = 0.39, p < 0.001). 96.2% of the respondents felt the need to learn the principles of dentistry.

Conclusions

Iranian medical students did not have adequate knowledge on oral health, although their attitudes towards it were sufficient, but their behaviors were inadequate. More emphasis should be given on the importance of familiarity with oral health knowledge and performance in medical curricula.