Background: The treatment of children and adolescents with disabilities (CA-Dis) and psycho-emotional disorders (CA-Psy) places special demands on dentists.
Aim: To explore German dentists' (with key expertise in paediatric dentistry) perception of their competence and comfort levels in dealing with these patients, and implications for access to care.
Methods: Online questionnaire surveying demographic information and self-assessment of training, knowledge, and comfort in dealing with CA-Dis and CA-Psy among 1725 members of the German Society of Paediatric Dentistry (DGKiZ).
Results: Ninety-two participants (11 male, 81 female) completed the questionnaire: 17.4% (n = 16) treated CA-Dis once or more a day; CA-Psy were rarely treated on a daily basis (7.6%; n = 7). In regard to CA-Dis, 62% (n = 57) rated their level of expertise as "good" or "very good"; for CA-Psy this was 40.2% (n = 37). Overall, 76.1% (n = 70), respectively, 88.0% (n = 81) of the respondents felt they had been inadequately prepared to treat CA-Dis or CA-Psy. Although the physical burden of treating CA-Psy was rated as "not at all stressful" or only "slightly stressful" by 45.7% of the participants, 31.5% rated the psychological distress as "very stressful" or "extremely stressful". The better their self-assessed expertise in treating CA-Dis was, the lower their own psychological distress was rated (r = -0.34). Training on this topic seems to have an impact on the perceived burden of treating such patients.
Conclusions: A core curriculum in special care dentistry needs to be embedded in the German dental curriculum. The results permit the development of health programs for workplace health management in dentistry.
Keywords: dental education; dental team; disability; postgraduate training; psycho-emotional disorders; special care dentistry.