Journal of Disability and Oral Health

cover art

Cover Date:
September 2013
Print ISSN:
1470-8558
Vol:
14
Issue:
3

editorial.pdf

89 Journal of Disability and Oral Health (2013) 14/3

Editorial - For access to care ‘attitudes are the real disability’

The title of my editorial refers to the phrase by world figure skating champion and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude”. Access to care is indeed a complex situation. Most barriers are well researched and identified and include, but are not limited to, socioeconomic level, education, remoteness, transportation, motivation to see a dentist, financial status etc. Access becomes even more complex when the patient is a person that requires special care for provision of oral healthcare. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that special care patients are underserved and as a consequence have significant oral health needs. Dental services, when delivered, range from fully comprehensive treatment, to care limited to extractions only under general anaesthesia. This wide inequality in service is attributed mainly to the lack of knowledge and experience of general dental practitioners in treating special care (SC) patients but also to their limited undergraduate and postgraduate training in Special Care Dentistry (SCD) (Faulks et al., 2012). One of the aims of the International Association for Disability and Oral Health (IADH) is to promote education in SCD. Through its education subcommittee it has developed an undergraduate curriculum in SCD in order to help eliminate the education barrier for the providers of oral health (IADH, 2012). As an added positive side-effect, when increasingly dental schools embed educational programmes in SCD, more graduates can seek specialisation, while more opportunities for national and international research will move SCD to a new level. But let us assume for a moment that we have conquered all barriers, education included. We still need a willing dentist to provide the care. There still exists a ‘litany’ of reasons for a dental practitioner not to treat a SC patient; among them, inadequate compensation, time consuming, contentious paperwork, appointment no-shows, unglamorous work and perceptions of professional responsibility among dentists. In other words, as Waldman and Perlman (2006) put it “Let someone else do it” or in the words of Scott Hamilton, “bad attitude”. Attitude is a mixture of beliefs, thoughts and feelings that predispose a person to respond, in a positive or negative way, to objects, people, processes or institutions (Brown et al., 2002). Attitudes are already taught directly or indirectly in dental schools and are central to professionalism and conduct.

Article Price
£15.00
Institution Article Price
£
Page Start
89
Page End
89
Authors
Dimitris Emmanouil

Articles from this issue

  • Title
  • Pg. Start
  • Pg. End

  1. editorial.pdf
  2. 89
  3. 89

  1. Predictors for perceived need and demand for oral care in older patients with mental disorders
  2. 91
  3. 96

  1. Dental care access of haemodialysis patients in a tertiary hospital
  2. 97
  3. 102

  1. Cross-cultural adaptation of the iADH undergraduate curriculum learning outcomes in Special Care Dentistry
  2. 103
  3. 110

  1. Case reports: extraction of teeth in patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia using the drug eltrombopag
  2. 111
  3. 113

  1. Diary Dates
  2. 118
  3. 118

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