Dentistry, as a health care profession, is responsible for developing and maintaining positive dentist-patient relationships. Doctor-patient interactions are an important part of any health-care career. Clinically-focused measures, such as restoration survival rates, have historically been employed in dentistry to evaluate treatment success.
Patients appear to be more personally involved in their quality evaluation nowadays due to increased access to health information, more patient involvement in the dentistry process, and increasing patient personalities, expectations, prior experiences, and life styles.
Since quality care addresses total clinical and psychological aspects of patients satisfaction (in addition to the technical parameters) every effort towards good quality dentistry and quality assurance needs to involve patient satisfaction and perceptions as important measures
Good dentist-patient relationship is an integral element of quality care, this relationship remains a key component of healthcare in spite of sweeping developments in medical systems and techniques. Trust is a core value in this relationship. In addition, considering patients’ relatively high ‘vulnerability’ in dental settings such as dental fear and anxiety, trust should be taken as indispensable in dentist-patient relationships.
The benefit of trustful relationships with patients has been understudied from the perspective of clinicians’ wellbeing and practice marketing. Trust in dentist-patient relationships can encourage dentists to achieve higher job satisfaction and suffer less mental stress from the relationship, which may develop to the point of regarding their occupation as a ‘calling’ rather than a job.
Objectives
1- Highlight the importance of dentist-patient relationships in dentistry
2- Recognize the role of patient satisfaction in evaluating treatment success
3- Emphasize the value of trust in dentist-patient relationships