Barriers to Preventive Approaches in Everyday Practice by Iranian Dentists

Objectives: To study Iranian dentist's concerns about barriers to applying preventive dentistry. Methods: We carried out a questionnaire survey among participants of two annual dental meetings, in Tehran, Iran: one in December 2004, and the other in July 2005. The survey was conducted anonymously using a self-administered questionnaire enclosed with the meeting documents, to be returned during the meeting days. A total of 1033 dentists returned the questionnaire. The present results are based on the answers of 909 respondents with a mean age of 37.2 years (SD=7.5), 64% of whom were men. Twelve statements were designed to measure the dentists' opinions about the strength of each possible barrier, later grouped into patient-related, dentist-related, and practice-related barriers. For the four statements in each group, dentists answered to the following question “How much does this aspect impede your carrying out preventive measures for patients?” The answers were given on a 5-grade Likert scale from “Very much” (indicating a strong barrier) to “Not at all” (indicating no barrier). Gender and age, working experience, and place all served as background information. Statistical evaluation was by Chi square test. Results: Between 31% and 35% of dentists considered patient-related barriers strong, and 2% to 4%, no barrier. Rankings for dentist-related barriers as strong ranged from 7% to 18%, and from 8% to 29% for rankings as no barrier. Rankings for practice-related barriers as strong ranged from 9% to 39%, and from 7% to 15% for no barrier. Male dentists reported most of the practice- and dentists-related barriers as strong more frequently than did female dentists (p-values ranging from 0.02 to 0.001). Conclusions: Dentists seemed to perceive patient-related aspects as the strongest barriers against applying preventive measures, which may in fact indicate their own practices regarding preventive approaches.