Assessing Attitudes and Perceptions of Dental Professionals Toward an Oral-Systemic Connection
Abstract
Background: A basic understanding of statistical concepts is essential to understand research and provide optimal patient care. The relationship between periodontitis and systemic health and how clinicians perceive this literaturealong with how they perceive and understand statisticsare of interest in dentistry. To date, little has been reported on how oral-systemic health literature translates to clinical practice and patient care. This project investigates how the dental professionparticularly periodontists and general dentistsperceives statistics and oral-systemic health literature by conducting a survey to inquire about these two subjects. Methods: This project was influenced by a collection of surveys in the medical literature since the mid-2000s on physicians attitudes and understanding of statistics (5,7,8,74,82,95,107). One such survey done with medical residents (107) served as a model. After developmental and pilot testing phases, the survey was made available to dental professionals and organized into four sections: demographics, attitudes toward oral-systemic health, self-reported familiarity with statistics, and knowledge of statistics. The survey was maintained via the web-based survey platform Qualtrics. The project hypothesized that there would be a difference between dental professionals self-perceived understanding of statistics and their actual knowledge of statistics. The aim was to collect basic information on dental professionals perceptions and knowledge of statistics and their attitudes toward oral-systemic health. Results: The numbers of initiated and completed surveys were 324 and 212, respectively. The numbers of periodontists and general dentists that participated were 63 and 84, respectively. The remaining 65 participants were of various dental specialties, such as but not limited to hygienists, prosthodontists, and orthodontists. The focus of this report was on responses from periodontists and general dentists.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 15, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1063886
Entities
People
- Adam W Brock
Organizations
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences