Cultivating Healthy Smiles: Exploring Regenerative Therapy in Periodontics

Abstract

Background: Studies on patients’ satisfaction with dental services have been carried out around the world as a yardstick in determining the quality of service offered. The few studies on patients’ satisfaction with dental care in Tanzania were done many years ago and did not focus on the situation in the dental school. Objective: This study aimed at determining the level of patients’ satisfaction with dental services provided at MUHAS dental clinics. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study that involved 322 patients (or guardians, for children) attending MUHAS dental clinic. The study was carried out at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) dental clinic, Ilala district, Dar-es-Salaam region in October 2018. The study targeted all patients who attended the MUHAS dental clinics during the period of the study. Information on demographics, chief complaint, diagnosis, type of treatment and level of satisfaction with services in the dental clinic was gathered through an interview. Every participant signed a consent form before participating in the study. Quality assurance was carried out by blindly repeating some of the participants every day of the study. Information gathered was entered into a computer and data was processed and analyzed using version 20 of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Percent distributions of respondents over the satisfaction scale were computed Chi-square was used to determine the significance of differences and multivariate multiple regression (MMR) was used to campare assosciation. Results: The age group 10-29 years had the highest (120) number of participants. Dental restorations were done in 113 (35%) of the patients followed by extractions in 93 (28.9%). High satisfaction levels in over 90% of the patients were scored in reception, cleanliness and outcome of treatment. Waiting time had the highest 102 (31.7%) number of patients who were not satisfied followed by local anaesthesia and cost of treatment. Above 96% of the patients responded that they would come back for treatment if need be. Over 97% responded that they would recommend the MUHAS dental clinics to friends or relatives. Conclusion: Generally, there was a high level of satisfaction with the services offered in the dental clinics of the School of Dentistry. The aspects that showed rather high levels of dissatisfaction were waiting time followed by local anesthesia effectiveness and cost of treatment.