THE ANALYSIS OF THE MEDICAL INFORMATION NEEDS FOR PATIENTS IN DENTISTRY

Abstract

Introduction. Communication skills became increasingly important for modern physicians to be able to provide all necessary information for the patients. Depending on the case, patients can request the data in a broad variety of formats. Patients and methods. We conducted a study based on self-reports of 1677 patients of private and district dental care clinics who were asked to answer 14 questions. The method of machine allocation of responses by means of the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) algorithm was used to evaluate results. Results. In this study, we specified 4 main groups of essential information for the patients during the dental appointment and 5 possible reasons for the lack of this information. Conclusion. The obtained results can be useful for doctors to establish a professional partnership with patients in order to enhance their confidence in the treatment plan.

Keywords

• patient information needs
• physician`s communication expertise
• patient-physician relationship
• communicative skills
• dentistry