Growing awareness for individuals’ right in addition to increased demand for medical service followed by introduction of national dental insurance scheme and increased number of dentists and its standards has been led to increase of medical complain...
Growing awareness for individuals’ right in addition to increased demand for medical service followed by introduction of national dental insurance scheme and increased number of dentists and its standards has been led to increase of medical complaints, subsequently resulting in increase of medical dispute or litigations in dentistry. Increased number of complicated and invasive dental procedures such as implant surgery, esthetic prosthetics and orthognathic surgery also led to these problems. This study aimed to investigate status and characteristics of medical complaints raised at an university-based dental hospital for recent years.
For this study, 120 cases of medical complaints at Dankook University Dental Hospital during three years' period from 2011 to 2013 which had been settled were retrospectively investigated. From the cases, we collected information about gender and age of the patients, reasons of complaints, related specialties, method and duration of settlement, amount of financial compensation for settlement and presence of informed consent and compared them. One-way ANOVA, Pearson's chi-square test and t-test were used for statistical analysis.
The most frequent reason of complaints was adverse treatment outcomes including complications (43.3%) and the next was unsatisfaction during treatment procedures (32.5%) and inhospitality (8.3%) in order (p<0.001). Frequency for medical complaints was higher in oral surgery, operative dentistry, periodontology and prosthodontics but when comparing recent three-years data, the rate is also growing in operative dentistry, pedodontics, oral medicine and hospital administration (p<0.001). The cases for unsatisfied treatment outcome were settled the most frequently through financial compensation such as refund of their payment or reparations and conversation was the method the most frequently used for any other cases (p=0.021). There were no significant differences in duration and the amount refund/reparations for settlement of the cases related to specialties but a longer duration and more amount of financial compensation was observed the cases related to oral surgery, prosthodontics and periodontology.
In conclusion, this study shows that most of the medical complaints in a university-based dental hospital was due to unsatisfactory treatment including treatment outcome and procedures (lack of explanation, delayed appointment, etc). While adverse treatment outcome was frequently settled through financial compensation or change of practitioner, conversation was the most frequently used resolution for the cases with the other reasons. Consistent with previous studies, complaints were mainly raised from oral surgery, prosthodontics periodontology and operative dentistry related with invasive treatment, but occurrence rates during recent three years was increasing in pedodontics, oral medicine and hospital administration as well. For prevention and better settlement for medical complaints, importance should be stressed out for establishment of dentist-patient rapport and patients should be given detailed information including potential complication, efficient communication with their practitioners and participation in decision making.