Abstract
BackgroundDentists report facing difficulties and experiencing frustrations with people on social assistance, one of the social groups with the most dental needs. Scientists ignore how they deal with these difficulties and whether they are able to overcome them. Our objective was to understand how dentists deal with critical issues encountered with people on social assistance.MethodsWe conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 33 dentists practicing in Montreal, Canada. The interview guides included questions on dentists’ experiences with people on social assistance and potential strategies developed for this group of people. Analyses consisted of interview debriefing, transcript coding, and data interpretation.ResultsDentists described strategies to resolve three critical issues: missed appointments (organisational issue); difficulty in performing non-covered treatments (biomedical issue); and low government fees (financial issue). With respect to missed appointments, dentists developed strategies to maximise attendance, such as motivating their patients, and to minimise the impact of non-attendance, like booking two people at the same time. With respect to biomedical and financial issues, dentists did not find any satisfactory solutions and considered that it was the government’s duty to resolve them. Overall, dentists seem reluctant to exclude people on social assistance but develop solutions that may discriminate against them.ConclusionsThe efforts and failures experienced by dentists with people on social assistance should encourage us to rethink how dental services are provided and financed.
Highlights
Dentists report facing difficulties and experiencing frustrations with people on social assistance, one of the social groups with the most dental needs
We showed that frustrations and challenges experienced by Canadian dentists fall into the following 3 categories [12]: 1) organizational issues, that dentists related to frequent “missed appointments” that upset their schedule; 2) biomedical issues, referring to dentists’ difficulties in performing treatments not covered by public dental insurance; and 3) financial issues, as people on social assistance would not generate much income, mainly due to low fees
We know that some dental professionals systematically exclude people on social assistance, but we ignore if others are able to develop solutions to overcome those difficulties
Summary
Dentists report facing difficulties and experiencing frustrations with people on social assistance, one of the social groups with the most dental needs. We showed that frustrations and challenges experienced by Canadian dentists fall into the following 3 categories [12]: 1) organizational issues, that dentists related to frequent “missed appointments” that upset their schedule; 2) biomedical issues, referring to dentists’ difficulties in performing treatments not covered by public dental insurance; and 3) financial issues, as people on social assistance would not generate much income, mainly due to low fees. This being said, we still ignore how dentists adapt to these three kinds of difficulties. We wanted to know the kinds of strategies that dentists developed with respect to organisational, biomedical, and financial issues associated with people on social assistance
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