Methods: Practitioners in the National Dental PBRN (NationalDentalPBRN.org) enrolled and treated patients who had defective restorations that needed either repair or replacement in permanent teeth. In addition, patients rated their dentist’s technical competence following the restorative procedure. Dentists rated the pain experienced during the procedure, whether complications occurred, and predicted their patient’s ratings of their own technical competence. The condition of the restoration was subsequently evaluated during a one-year recall visit. Failure was defined as the restoration rated as not acceptable and requiring or already having received a repair, replacement, endodontics, or an extraction.
Results: Data are available from 191 practitioners who participated in all aspects of this study with outcome data available on 4,530 patients and 5,850 restorations. The overall failure rate was 7.1% with rates ranging from 0% to 50% among practices. Dentists indicated that there were complications in 7% of the restorative treatments and that the patient experienced pain during 12% of the procedures. The association between patients’ ratings of the dentists’ technical competence and the occurrence of a restoration failure was small, but statistically significant (r = -.15, p <.001). The dentist’s rating of the patient’s view of his or her technical competence was not associated with occurrence of a restoration failure. The association between patient’s ratings of the dentists technical competence and dentist’s rating of the patients viewpoint was small (p = .09, p < .001).
Conclusion: Dental patients have difficulty making valid judgments about the technical competence of their dentist. Furthermore, dentists’ assessment of their patient’s viewpoint also lacks validity. Support: U01-DE-16746, U01-DE-16747, U19-DE-22516.