Abstract
BackgroundThis study aimed to generate prioritised goals for oral health services for people with disabilities as a first step in meeting the need for evidence based oral health services for people with disabilities in Ireland.MethodsThe study used a three round modified e-Delphi method, involving dental service professionals and people with disabilities or their representatives, in Ireland. Three rounds were completed online using SurveyMonkey. Round 1 asked: “List what you think dental services for people with disabilities in Ireland should be like.” Items for subsequent rounds were generated from responses to Round 1. Round 2 and Round 3 used 5 point Likert scales to rank these items by priority: from No Priority (1) to Top Priority (5). Consensus was achieved on each item where at least 80% of respondents considered an item either High or Top Priority. A consensus meeting concluded the process.ResultsSixty-one panelists started and 48 completed the survey. The Delphi panel agreed on level of priority for 69 items and generated 16 consensus statements. These statements covered a range of topics such as access to care, availability of information and training, quality of care, dental treatment and cost. A recurrent theme relating to the appropriateness of care to individual need arose across topics suggesting a need to match service delivery according to the individual's needs, wants and expectations rather than the disability type/diagnosis based service which predominates today.ConclusionsThis process produced a list of prioritised goals for dental services for people with disabilities. This creates a foundation for building evidence-based service models for people with disabilities in Ireland.
Highlights
About fifteen per cent of the Irish population (600,000 people in a country of just over four and a half million) report having a disability [1]
Some possible contributing factors are evidenced in the literature, both published and gray. These include a lack of general dental practitioners who are appropriately trained and confident to meet the needs and expectations of this growing group at primary care level [8]; limited access to general anaesthesia [9], which leads to longer waiting times and poorer outcomes [10, 11]; a reported lack of resources for dental services [3] and a lack of appropriately designed service models [6]
Six people included in the sampling frame were purposively excluded: Three of these were felt not to have sufficient experience regarding dental services for people with disabilities and did not meet inclusion criteria, and three others were dental professionals who were removed to reduce an over-representation of people in the category of General Dentist within the panel
Summary
About fifteen per cent of the Irish population (600,000 people in a country of just over four and a half million) report having a disability [1]. Some possible contributing factors are evidenced in the literature, both published and gray These include a lack of general dental practitioners who are appropriately trained and confident to meet the needs and expectations of this growing group at primary care level [8]; limited access to general anaesthesia [9], which leads to longer waiting times and poorer outcomes [10, 11]; a reported lack of resources for dental services [3] and a lack of appropriately designed service models [6]. The Delphi panel agreed on level of priority for 69 items and generated 16 consensus statements These statements covered a range of topics such as access to care, availability of information and training, quality of care, dental treatment and cost. This creates a foundation for building evidence-based service models for people with disabilities in Ireland
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