Dentists' characteristics and child behavior management techniques

Dentists believe that children's behaviors in the operatory may cause problems, demanding time, attention, and skill. This study explored relationships among several demographic, structural, and attitudinal practitioner characteristics hypothesized to influence dentists' choice of seventeen child behavior management techniques used with nonhandicapped preschool patients. A sixty-item questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of 366 dentists and all thirty-four pedodontists licensed in Minnesota (N = 400), yielding a 67.5 percent response rate. Data were analyzed to determine frequency distributions for all variables, as well as to analyze relationships among seventeen management strategies and all practitioner characteristics. Pearson correlations and chi square tests of significance were used. Findings indicated that the majority of respondents held a negative view of parental involvement in managing preschoolers' behaviors in the operatory. Respondents' stronger agreement with certain authoritarian attitudes, as well as greater degrees of some measures of productivity, were related to higher frequencies of use of physical restraints and nitrous oxide. Many beliefs regarding child behavior management may be based upon professional dogma, particularly those which focus on the importance of establishing authority and control over the child patient, and perhaps, even the parent. Dentistry actively promotes individual acceptance of personal responsibility for one's own oral health, but it appears that the dental care delivery setting for children does not presently reinforce or support this message. If children are expected, as adults, to take responsibility for making wise decisions about oral health and care-seeking behaviors, such decision-making skills need to be fostered during childhood.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)