Either you Break or Brighten up: Exploring Dental Professionals’ Experiences of Dealing with Emotional Distress during Dental Practice. A Qualitative Description

Abstract

Purpose: The study purpose was to provide qualitative description of distress, its manifestations and role of resilience as perceived by practicing dentists in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The goal was to provide fresh insights into the topic of distress and required coping skills in order to inform the development of future stress management programs.Methodology: This study was designed qualitatively to determine the causes and impacts of stress among practicing dentists in KSA. Purposive sampling of dentists having not less than 5 years of practice and an average of 54 working hours per week (SD= 6) was done based on convenience approach. Twelve semi structured individual interviews with the help of an interview guide, were conducted and audiotaped to collect the data. After analysis of descriptive data, a coding scheme with four categories was generated by continuous adjustments. The categories originated as; stressful situations, impacts of distress, coping strategies and need of future interventions, were then applied to every single interview. This had identified many codes/themes and sub codes/subthemes related to the topic. The codes emerged were also double checked with the supervisor to have an inter-coder agreement. The participants were contacted again to validate the given information in the transcribed interview to increase the credibility of the study.Findings: Work load, different kind of patients and financial pressure were reported as major cause of distress for dentists during practice. The cognitive reactions to distress came out to be some physical and many emotional disturbances affecting both the professional and family lives of dentists.Regarding the experiences to cope, they implemented personal strategies to be resilient instead of compromising the quality of care they deliver. Also, they emphasized on the need of following interventions; Continued dental education with training courses to improve resilience amongst dentists and modified dental curriculum for dental students to face positively, the distressful situations in future practical part of their profession.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: This study provided deep understandings of already developed concepts regarding stress and coping. The study findings proposed that individuals should focus on delivering high quality care by utilizing positive stress coping strategies. They should learn to adopt strategies that are easily accessible and sustainable within the context of a busy dental practice. Interventions to improve skills like motivation, self-determination and decision making should be implemented. Thus the study calls for imperative steps to be taken by stakeholders in dental institutes and at dental practices.