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Introduction: Every child has the right to health and life free from violence. However, each year millions of children around the world are victims of and witnesses to physical, sexual, and emotional violence. Dentists may be the first personnel to identify and report child abuse cases, as most common symptoms are located within the orofacial regions that they routinely examine.

Objective: To evaluate the dentist’s knowledge, attitude, and experience regarding signs and symptoms of child abuse and neglect, reporting procedure and level of education.

Materials and Method: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2018 to May 2019among 206 dentists of Nepal using a self-administered questionnaire. The dentists were selected using convenience sampling method. Data was collected and entered in Microsoft Excel sheet and analysis was done in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.

Result: The participants showed insufficient knowledge of the signs and symptoms of child abuse and neglect. The attitudes of participants towards detecting and reporting cases were generally positive. Only 20 (9.7%) of the participants had suspected cases of child abuse in their clinics. Out of which 30 of them were diagnosed as cases of child abuse and neglect but only seven were reported. Lack of knowledge about referral procedures and uncertainty about diagnosis of the case as child abuse were the main causes of underreporting.

Conclusion: This study showed that dentists have insufficient knowledge about child abuse and neglect but had positive attitudes towards their role in detecting and reporting it.

Attitude; child abuse; dentist; violence.