General dentists' attitudes toward delegation, information, and patient influence in a prosthodontic context

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate attitudes among general d entists in Sweden in relation to gender, age, prosthodontic activity, and d ental delivery system (private or public). Materials and Methods: Questionn aires were sent to a random sample of 2,059 dentists, and a response rate o f 76% (1,567 dentists) was achieved. Among those who responded, 50% were pr ivate practitioners and 50% were publicly employed practitioners; 42% were female and 58% were male. The questionnaire contained 10 statements aimed a t measuring attitudes. Their dimensionality was analyzed using principal co mponents analysis. The resulting factors were related to delivery system (p ublic or private), gender, age, job satisfaction, and weekly working hours used for prosthodontics in multiple regression models. Results: There was a wide variation in the answers to the statements, indicating great individu al differences in opinions among dentists. Several distributions differed w ith respect to gender and delivery system, but the mean differences between various groups of dentists were small. The most affirmative attitude was s hown for delegation of impression taking to auxiliaries (mean 6.7; SD 1.8), and the most negative attitude was shown for close cooperation between den tists (mean 1.8; SD 1.4). The factor analysis gave 3 factors, with a varian ce explanation of 57%. Regression models for the 3 attitude dimensions ("pa tient influence," "delegation," and "patient information") showed that fema le dentists felt more positive about delegation and information than male d entists. The explained variance was very low for all 3 models and varied fr om 0.01 to 0.05. Conclusion: Although the differences in attitudes between various groups of dentists were statistically significant, these difference s were small in relation to the large variation in attitudes among individu al dentists.