Communication during prosthodontic treatment--dentist, patient, and dental nurse

This study described and explored verbal communication during prosthodontic treatment.

Sixty-one patients and 15 dentists participated. Sixty-one prosthetic treatment periods, during which fixed tooth- or implant-supported prostheses were placed, were followed. One visit during each treatment period was audio recorded. The recorded verbal communication was analyzed with the Roter Interaction Analysis System-dental. The inter-rater reliability was 95% to 97% for utterance classification and kappa = 0.71 to 0.78 for categorization definition.

There were 43,663 utterances available for analysis. Of those, 59% was dentist communication, 28% was patient communication, and 10% was dental nurse communication. Other persons, e.g., dental technicians, contributed with 3%. The dentist-patient communication contained more task-focused than socioemotional behaviors. Female patients used socioemotional talk to a greater extent than did the male patients. Dentists and patients of different genders communicated more overall, especially male dentists with female patients. The age difference between dentist and patient had no effect on the amount or type of communication. The dental nurse talked slightly more with male patients.

When different genders met there was more communication, and the talk was more socioemotional when the patient was female.