[Defensive behavior in medical care. A lesson for the dentist?]

Defensive behaviour in medical care is defined as a clear deviation from the physicians (dentists) usual behaviour and from what he/she considers to be good practice in order to prevent problems in the contact with patients and their families. General practitioners behave defensively in substantial proportion of their referrals to a specialist (15%) and of their ordering diagnostic tests (25%). In both instances varying (clinical and non-clinical) reasons can prompt the physician to refer or to test. Defensive considerations can play an equally varying role within all these reasons, which shed more light on the nature of the daily work in primary care. It is concluded that no reason exists to presume that Dutch dentists are more free either from non-clinical considerations and from defensive behaviour when they treat their patients than general practitioners.