2020 Volume 41 Issue 4 Pages 366-374
The purpose of this study was to investigate what the parents of schoolchildren with intellectual or other disabilities expect of their family dentists, and to demonstrate the value of regular visits to family dentists to prevent the development of dental caries. Questionnaires were distributed to 227 families with special-needs schoolchildren with intellectual or other disabilities in June 2018. The parents answered questions regarding the presence or absence of a family dentist, frequency of dental visits, the age of the child at the first visit to the family dentist, and the good points of and requests for the family dentist. The caries experience of each child was confirmed from the results of the annual school dental examination in 2018.
One hundred and thirty-six respondents returned the questionnaire (collection rate 59.9%). Of 136 children, 134 had records of the school dental examination and 101 had a family dentist. The results were as follows:
(1) Eighty-four children visited a dental clinic and 12 visited a university hospital at least once a year.
(2) Sixty-seven respondents replied “doctor’s hospitality”, followed by “staff’s hospitality” (64 respondents) and “high expertise in dentistry for the disabled” (49 respondents) as good points of the family dentist.
(3) Sixty respondents answered the question “What do you expect of a dental clinic?” Key words were picked up from the text replies and classified : frequently-mentioned key words were those related to “high expertise in dentistry for persons with disability”, “hospitality toward the patient” and “waiting time considerations”.
(4) There was no significant relation between the presence or absence of a family dentist, type of dental institution or caries experience of children with intellectual disability.
