Opinions of different subgroups of dentists and patients about the ideal dentist and the ideal patient

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Abstract
The aim was to study whether subgroups of lay people and dentists differ in their opinions about the ideal dentist and the ideal patient. This was done by analyzing further a data set containing responses on single statements regarding different aspects of dentist-patient relationship that have been reported previously. A questionnaire containing 124 five-class Likert scale statements and questions about the background of the respondents was sent in November 1988 to a representative sample of lay people and to all dentists in Kuopio and North Karelia Provinces in Finland. To extract areas of interdependence for both dentists and patients, factor analyses were applied to the data and factor scores were calculated for further analyses. Differences in the opinions were studied between dentists and patients as well as among subgroups of patients and dentists. The power of the selected factors in discriminating between dentists and patients, and different subgroups of dentists and patients was evaluated by means of logistic regression analyses. The expectations of dentists and patients were similar about the ideal patient. About the ideal dentist, dentists and patients agreed only on one of the five factors, i.e. communicativeness and informativeness. Differences, especially in the opinions about the ideal patient, were found between following subgroups of patients: non-regular and regular attenders, males and females, old and young, patients with low and high education and different occupational status; and between private practitioners and community dentists.