Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) can be
transmitted through blood, vaginal secretion, infected
semen, breast milk as well as blood containing saliva,
vomitus and urine. Health care workers (HCWs) are at risk of
HIV infection; and standard precautions is a guideline to be
followed by HCWs to prevent it.
Objective: This study was aimed to evaluate the level of
knowledge, attitude and practice on standard precautions
for prevention of HIV infection; and its associated factors.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was
conducted among 200 clinical year medical students from a
public university in Malaysia. The clinical year medical
students were arranged into strata according to year of
study and were randomly selected via stratified random
sampling. Each respondent were provided a selfadministered
questionnaire. There were four sections in the
questionnaire to obtain information on socio-demographic
characteristics, knowledge, attitude and practice on
standard precautions. Both descriptive and analytical
analyses such as Chi-squared test were performed.
Results: A total of 162 respondents participated in this
study, contributed to the response rate of 81%. The study
demonstrated that there was no significant association
between level of practice with socio-demographic
characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age, religion, year
of study and total family income. However, there was a
significant association between level of practice with level of
knowledge and attitude (p