Patient's Satisfaction with Dental Service Provided by Dental Students of Qassim University, KSA. (Preprint)
Authors: Aldakhil Ahmed , Alotaibi Mohammed 
Published: August 2018

BACKGROUND

In the past, dental patient satisfaction has been measured by the dentist's technical competence and mechanical precision2. Patient's opinion played no part in this method of measuring quality. Consequently, consideration of patient's satisfaction became an integral part of providing dental services3. Some patients want a dentist who listens to them, has a friendly caring attitude, discuses treatment options and procedures, and gives confidence7. Communication skills, a component of empathy, have been shown to be important in limiting patient's dissatisfaction12. The self-rated oral health status might be considered as the key factor of patient’s satisfaction and positive feedback.

OBJECTIVE

To achieve high levels of patient's satisfaction, it is crucial to find out which items patients consider important and how they operationalize these items 17. Finally, medical care cannot be of high quality, unless patients’ satisfaction is observed.

METHODS

A 22-item patient's satisfaction questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire was used to obtain data from patients who were then currently receiving care in the College of Dentistry, Qassim University, KSA after minimum of three visits to the dental chair. Two hundred and fifty copies of the questionnaire were distributed equally in both male and female sections over four months period (March-August 2017).

RESULTS

A total of 250 questionnaire papers were distributed of which 215 were returned for a response rate of 86%. The response rate in male section was (94%) higher than that in female section (78%) at College of Dentistry, Qassim University, KSA. Overall ranking of factors related to satisfaction was done by calculating the mean percentage of agreement regarding the different disciplines of satisfaction among the studied group. The mean percentage of agreement for the 3 disciplines was 82.5% denoting a high level of satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicated that the majority of patients were satisfied with the provided dental service at College of Dentistry, Qassim University, KSA.
Patient dentist interaction and Technical competency had the most significant effect on patient satisfaction levels in this study . On the other hand, Administrative efficiency (AE) and Clinical setup environment (CS) were the factor that had the most impact on levels of dissatisfaction.
In this study, no significant differences were observed between the satisfaction score and Nationality of the patients. The only significant finding observed for the satisfaction score was gender .While there was a significant differences regarding satisfaction between both genders .

CLINICALTRIAL

The Research Ethics Committee and Research & Presentation Skills Supervision Committee at College of Dentistry, Qassim University, KSA approved this study (Code #:EA/203/2017) and (SRPSSC #: M-5003-17) . The waiver of the informed consent process was approved on the basis of the questionnaires being anonymous and self-administered and containing no identifiers.