Engagement with the North Wales Local Dental Committee - part 2: communication preferences

Aims To gather the views of dentists practising within North Wales on their preferences as to how they would prefer to interact with the North Wales Local Dental Committee (LDC) (NWLDC).Design Descriptive cross-sectional survey.Setting Online electronic questionnaire.Materials and methods Survey circulated via the NWLDC's current communication channels, local professional groups, the local health board and Health Education and Improvement Wales' MaxCourse email distribution.Results A total of 167 unique responses were received from across North Wales, which included 132 responses from primary care dentists, yielding a response rate of 40.6%. Respondents would prefer to interact with the NWLDC via email notifications (88%), virtual meetings (52.1%) and via the LDC website (41.9%). Furthermore, 31.1% wanted a combination of both physical and virtual attendance at an LDC meeting to be an option and 43.7% of respondents did not want to attend LDC meetings as a preferred method of engaging with the LDC. The survey indicated that holding an educational event just before the LDC meeting will not have a positive impact on subsequent participation in the LDC meeting for 91.6% of respondents. The survey revealed that 70% had never visited the NWLDC's website, with only 20.4% of people visiting it more than once a year. Also, 83.8% stated that the pandemic had made no difference on them accessing the NWLDC website. The results allowed the identification of the top five 'core elements' for an ideal LDC website and which elements should have their access restricted only to LDC members.Conclusions The survey revealed that the respondents want greater communication from the NWLDC and that this is best achieved over a variety of different communication platforms, using the NWLDC website as a primary information resource to which the other communication methods are tethered. It is recognised that only a minority will want to, or be able to, attend the quarterly LDC meetings and so it is imperative that the NWLDC's communication strategy accommodates these individuals, both proactively and passively, by effective use of digital media and to continuously monitor its effectiveness so that it can adapt its strategy to maximise engagement and information delivery. There is a need to expand the representation of the LDC committee to encompass those who have newly entered the profession or are new to the area. The NWLDC recognises the need to reach out to dentists across North Wales who many feel isolated and disenfranchised to establish a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship.