Interprofessional care for temporomandibular joint disorders: the patient’s perspective

Abstract

The Indiana University School of Dentistry TMJ Institute is a multidisciplinary clinic designed to support the management of patients with challenging temporomandibular disorders. Professionals across dentistry, medicine, physical therapy, and social work collaborate to create a customised, interprofessional consensus to patient care. Compared with traditional, siloed healthcare models, are patients diagnosed with TMJ dysfunction satisfied with the quality of care received from an interprofessional approach? The objective of this study is to determine the level of patient satisfaction at the Institute using a 5-Point Likert scale patient questionnaire. A total of 93 questionnaires were distributed and 84 were collected. A total of 43% of patients travelled over 50 miles to be seen at the Institute. ‘Strongly agree’ was the most selected response for each prompt. The exception was whether patients preferred to meet with each clinician individually, to which ‘strongly disagree’ or ‘disagree’ was the most popular response, indicating that an interprofessional approach was preferred. The results and comments provided by patients revealed that most patients diagnosed with TMJ dysfunction were highly satisfied with the interprofessional approach used at the TMJ Institute. Our study suggests that positive patient satisfaction is an important factor in assessing the quality and efficacy of interprofessional, patient-centred clinic models.