Relationship between Professional Training of Dentists and Outpatient Clinical Production

The aim was to evaluate the association between the professional training of dentists and their outpatient production (OP) of clinical and collective/preventive procedures and the total number of procedures registered in a health information system.

It included all 19,947 primary dental care units participating in the Program for Improvement of Access and Quality of Primary Care (PMAQ-AB 2nd cycle) and the number of clinical procedures (CP), collective/preventive procedures (PP), and total procedures (TP) registered in the ambulatory information system between November 2013 and July 2014 for each participant oral health team. The outcome was being above the national median of procedures. The main variables related to training were the dentists specialising in family health, the level of training, and participation in permanent education. Effect estimates were calculated by multiple logistic regression.

In the final model, controlled by contextual factor work process, family health specialists had higher chances (odds ratio (OR) = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00; 1.27) of producing above the national median of CP than nonspecialists, OR = 1.06 (0.96; 1.18) for PP and OR = 1.17 (1.08; 1.27) for TP. Dentists taking permanent education had higher chances than those not taking it of producing above the national median for CP, PP, and TT, respectively, with OR = 1.40 (1.20; 1.62), OR = 1.24 (1.09; 1.40), and OR = 1.28 (1.18; 1.39).

Training in family health performs more procedures in primary care settings than those without training. However, this OP is influenced by variables related to the municipality and the work process, especially for PP. If the highest production observed is a consequence of training, then public health managers can not only encourage training policies such as permanent education policies to expand the use of services.