The Effect of Nudge Intervention in Seeking Dental Consultation

Objectives: Dental caries continuously affect all individuals throughout their lifetime. Identified barriers in seeking oral healthcare include dentists not giving advices to their patients, and patients are not aware of the importance of a regular dental checkup. The study aimed to measure the effect of nudge intervention in dental consultation seeking behavior of the participants and to determine the types of nudge that show higher impact in terms of number of responses and response time.
Methods: Using a randomized controlled trial including 180 participants from a university workplace, personalized letters of positively-framed, negatively-framed and neutrally-framed nudge intervention were delivered.
Results: Twenty five percent of the participants responded and sought dental consultation in all types of nudge intervention. Participants’ response time among responded and sought dental consultation was immediate. Positively- framed, negatively-framed and neutrally-framed, letters increase the number of dental consultation regardless of participants’ age, gender and position.
Conclusions: Nudge intervention is effective to improve the dental consultation seeking behavior of the participants which can be a way to break barriers in the improvement of oral health of all individuals.