BARRIERS TO THE PROVISION OF COMPLEX DENTAL TREATMENT FOR DENTATE OLDER-PEOPLE - A COMPARISON OF DENTISTS AND PATIENTS VIEWS

The majority of older people live active lives and more are retaining their teeth. These people rely for their dental care on general dental practitioners. However, many find that the service they are offered f alls short of their desires, and this study examined this problem from the points of view of the public and the dentists. Qualitative group discussions were conducted among 61 middle-aged and elderly people and 20 dentists, followed by a quantitative study involving 20 dentists a nd 57 of their patients. The aim was to discover what, if any, differe nces there may have been between their expectations of dental treatmen t. There were no significant differences between middle-aged and older peoples' views on barriers to the receipt of dental care. However, de ntists assumed that their older patients would have significantly grea ter negative dental attitudes than their middle-aged patients. Dentist s considered that ability to pay would be a significantly greater barr ier for their working-class rather than their middle-class patients. H owever, among the patients themselves there was no significant differe nce. The comparison of dentists' and patients' views on barriers to tr eatment showed that dentists significantly overestimated their older p atients' reluctance to receive dental treatment.