1998 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 42-50
“The burn-out syndrome” is increasiugly common among doctors and nurses. Therefore, we are hoping that the fields of psychology and sociology will improve our working environment through our multi-discipline research. There is however no research that measures pressures on dentists. The communication between the doctor and a child patient is very important to pediatric dentistry, and the psychological stress produced by children on dentists during treatment is a key factor in our work place. There is a psychological stress on dentists when they examine their patients, and most of that stress comes from the children and the children's mothers. We are focusing on the external behavior of the children, using factor analysis, and are developing a Psychological Stress Response Scale for stress produced by children on dentists during treatment, This scale is a 21-item questionnaire. To confirm the effectiveness of this scale, we examined its reliability and validity from many points of view. We found the scale to be effective for measuring the degree of the of a child patient effect on a dentist during treatment. In the present study, we used this scale and examined the results by analyzing the relationship between the psychological stress score of dentists during treatment and State-Trait Anxiety. Moreover, we examined the relationship between the psychological stress scores of dentists and general items. The findings were as follows:
1. We found a significant correlation between the state and trait anxiety scales, confirming the relationship between the two.
2. The psychological stress score, measuring the stress produced by treating children, correlated significntly to the dentists anxiety. There was a positive correlation between high anxiety scores and high psychological stress scores for both state anxiety, related to the time and place, and trait anxiety, related to the personal characteristics of the individual.
3. An examination of items on the psychological stress scale revealed a significant difference between the psychological stress scores for clusters of low-anxiety and high-anxiety items for 6 state anxiety items and 10 trait anxiety items of the dentist.
4. Trait differences in the psychological stress scores resulting from stress produced on dentists by children during treatment was not related to the dentist's sex, age, years of chinical experience, or marital status.
The above results indicate a correlation between the tendency of the individual dentist stoward anxiety and his or her score on the scale measuring psychological stress related to treatment.
