Inadequate record keeping by dental practitioners

When a dental practitioner is brought before a disciplinary body, a common finding is that dental records were poorly kept and inadequate to establish issues of consent for treatment or the nature of the treatment undertaken. Often this finding may be incidental to the actual issue that brought the practitioner before a regulatory body or the Courts. The aim of this study was to examine recent cases reported in the State of Victoria involving dental practitioners, specifically seeking those cases where the record keeping was found to be inadequate as an incidental finding.

Published rulings of formal complaints and notification cases brought before disciplinary hearings in the State of Victoria for the period January 2000 to June 2014 were analysed with regards to orders made in respect to record keeping.

Complaints and notifications specific to dental record keeping accounted for less than 2% of formal complaints. And yet up to 75% of cases have made a finding of unprofessional conduct against a dental practitioner on the basis of inadequate record keeping, most often in combination with other breaches of conduct.

Adherence to the traditional format of handwriting or typing entries into patient records may contribute to the problem of poor record keeping in a clinical dental setting. Newer technologies such as digital intraoral and extraoral photography and audio-recording of patient interactions may offer a solution to the problems of record keeping.