Objective:

In recent decades, antibiotic resistance has become a global public health problem. Dentists should not remain oblivious to this serious problem, as they are responsible for around 10 % of antibiotic prescriptions in the out-of-hospital setting. The purpose of the present study was to design and validate an instrument to analyse the knowledge and antibiotic prescribing habits in oral surgery.

Material and methods:

The process of constructing and validating the instrument consisted of five stages: 1) Design of the instrument through and exhaustive review of the literature published between January 2016 and January 2021 in the PubMed-Medline and Cochrane Library databases; 2) Validation of the content by a panel of 6 experts; 3) Cognitive pretest to assess internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha); 4) Evaluation of the metric properties of the scale; and 5) Approval by the Research Ethics Committee of the European University.

Results:

An instrument consisting of 48 items was obtained; 20 referring to knowledge of antibiotic therapy and 28 corresponding to antibiotic prescribing habits. The content validity of the questionnaire, measured by the Content Validity Idex (CVI) was 0.85 with a reliability of 0,80 and almost perfect temporal stability (CCI = 0,95).

Conclusions:

The rigorous design and validation of this study provides and instrument with sufficient predictive validity for subsequent application and assessment of antibiotic prescribing knowledge and habits in oral surgery.

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