Restoring the voids of voices by signs and gestures, in dentistry: A cross-sectional study

To help dentists to communicate with the hearing impaired patients, reach an accurate diagnosis and explain the treatment plan by learning some signs and gestures used in the nonverbal communication (NVC) and by devising some new signs and gestures related to dentistry which shall be easy to learn and understand both by the hearing impaired patients and the dentists.

The study was carried out on 100 hearing impaired students in the age group of 10-14 years in two special schools for hearing impaired children located in two different states of India, where different spoken languages and different sign languages are used. One dentist (expert dentist) was trained in the NVC and the other dentist (non expert dentist) had no knowledge of this type of communication, communicated the same sets of statements related to dentistry, to the hearing impaired children. One1 translator was assigned to judge their interactions. Students were asked to tell the interpreter at the end of each signed interaction what they understood from the statement conveyed to them by both the dentists.

All data collected were subjected to statistical analysis using Chi-square test and odds ratio test.

In the special school of 1st state, the nonexpert dentist conveyed only 36.3% of the information correctly to the students, whereas the expert dentist conveyed 83% of the information correctly. In the special school of 2nd state, the nonexpert dentist conveyed only 37.5% of the information correctly to the students, whereas the expert dentist conveyed 80.3% of the information correctly.

Dentists should be made aware of the NVC and signs and gestures related to dentistry should be taught to the hearing impaired students as well as the dental students.