Patient's Opinions about Providing Medical History Information to the Dentist

Objective: Assessing the patient's opinion about necessity of providing medical information to the dentist. Methods: A survey in a form of questionnaire involving 50 adult patients from each clinic (Farwaniya, Jahra, Adan, Amiri, Bnid Algar). It recorded demographic data including age, sex, nationality, and educational level to determine significant differencies in response within these varies groups. Results: 250 patients completed survey forms. 20.4% of the participants were younger than 20, 51.5% were within 20-40, 25.7% were within 40-60, and 2.4% were older than 60 years of age. About 1.9% were illiterate, 43.7% had some schooling up to high school, and 54.9% had higher education level.about 78.6% of the participant were Kwuaities. 55.8% of the paticipant were female. About 90.8% of the participant necessiated the presence of the medical health history form in dental clinics. Most of the participants (about 92.2%) agreed about the importance of providing the dentist with all medical related information. The rest refused to reveal informations due to different reasons; unimpotant information (3.4%), privacy (2.9%), or afraid of treatment refusal (1.5%). Conclusions: Since not all the patients providing accurate and true information either to the dentist or in the health history form, it is essential for the dentist to exercise special care when reviewing a patient's health history and to ensure that the patients understand all of the questions on the form. Evidence also supports the use of universal precautions while treating all patients, since the health history form is not a fail-safe source of disease information. Finally, it is the responsibility of the entire dental team to clearly educate the patient regarding the importance of accurate information on the health history.