Evaluarea implicării pacienților în livrarea serviciilor de medicină dentară: beneficiile unei abordări bazate pe managementul calității

Abstract

The increase in the use of quality-driven approaches in healthcare is imposing new challen-ges for healthcare professionals and patients, as well. Despite the fact that diverse models are availa-ble, dental care has a long road ahead of beneftting from implementing quality management standards and procedures while providing dental care to pa-tients. In this study, we explored the perceptions and practices of Romanian dentists with regards to patients’ participation in the delivery of dental care, by using a quality management approach. We surveyed 1.239 Romanian dentists, of whom 120 returned the completed surveys (a response rate of 9.68%). The survey assessed their knowledge of, attitudes about and practice of quality manage-ment. For the purpose of this paper, we analyzed those questions which required dentists to assess patients’ involvement in the quality assurance pro-cess. Almost half of the participants (45.4%) have been working for between 11 and 20 years. 89.8% of them have managerial roles in their dental offces. Although only 32.5% of the dentists have taken part in a Continuous Medical Education course, most of them see in patients an active partner in assuring and improving quality. However, dentists identify the lack of quality management and poor regulation of quality as being main barriers for which so few den-tists are implementing quality management systems (40% of our respondents). Our data suggest that, despite dentists’ availability to implement quality management principles and involve patients in the process, an improved framework is needed to trans-form availability into daily practice

Keywords

• quality management, quality improvement, dental care, patients, romania.