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Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository

OBJECTIVE: Dental records and forensic odontology play an important role in both healthcare and the legal system, aiding in personalized patient care, human identification, and legal proceedings. This study aims to investigate dental record-keeping practices and assess the awareness of forensic odon...

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Autores principales: Baqai, Haifa Saquib, Zaidi, Syed Jaffar Abbas, Baig, Qaiser Ali, Bashir, Muhammad Bilal, Anwar, Madiha, Ansari, Asma Saher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10594786/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37875855
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-023-03500-2
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author Baqai, Haifa Saquib
Zaidi, Syed Jaffar Abbas
Baig, Qaiser Ali
Bashir, Muhammad Bilal
Anwar, Madiha
Ansari, Asma Saher
author_facet Baqai, Haifa Saquib
Zaidi, Syed Jaffar Abbas
Baig, Qaiser Ali
Bashir, Muhammad Bilal
Anwar, Madiha
Ansari, Asma Saher
author_sort Baqai, Haifa Saquib
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Dental records and forensic odontology play an important role in both healthcare and the legal system, aiding in personalized patient care, human identification, and legal proceedings. This study aims to investigate dental record-keeping practices and assess the awareness of forensic odontology among Pakistani dentists over 12 months. This study aims to collect data from 500 dentists, identify areas for enhancement, and develop a strategic action plan to improve record-keeping quality and forensic odontology application, culminating in a comprehensive dental data repository to support legal and criminal investigations in Pakistan. METHODOLOGY: This study employed a mixed-method approach conducted at Hamdard Dental College from January to March 2023. The quantitative phase involved distributing questionnaires to 463 dentists, chosen through stratified random sampling. Out of these, 413 responded, yielding an 86% response rate. These questionnaires focused on dental record-keeping practices and dentists’ awareness of forensic odontology. Subsequently, based on the questionnaire results, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 purposively selected dentists to gain deeper insight into the challenges and potential solutions. Data from both phases were integrated and analyzed accordingly. RESULTS: The study included 413 participants, mainly females (79%), with ages ranging from 27 to 65 years and an average age of 46.4 years. Most dentists had 5–20 years of work experience (53%), and most (87.4%) were practicing in private clinical settings. All the dentists generated medical and dental records, but the duration of their record-keeping varied, with some maintaining them for up to a year and others for two years or longer. Five themes were generated from the qualitative content analysis. These themes were dentists’ perceptions, barriers and challenges, knowledge and awareness, and improvement strategies. CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that local practitioners in Pakistan exhibit subpar practices in dental record-keeping and maintenance of patient history, irrespective of whether they use a digital or traditional file-based system. Even though dentists are cognizant of the importance of record-keeping, they do not actively maintain comprehensive records. This suggests the need for improved training and system improvements to address the gaps in record-keeping practices.
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spelling pubmed-105947862023-10-25 Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository Baqai, Haifa Saquib Zaidi, Syed Jaffar Abbas Baig, Qaiser Ali Bashir, Muhammad Bilal Anwar, Madiha Ansari, Asma Saher BMC Oral Health Research OBJECTIVE: Dental records and forensic odontology play an important role in both healthcare and the legal system, aiding in personalized patient care, human identification, and legal proceedings. This study aims to investigate dental record-keeping practices and assess the awareness of forensic odontology among Pakistani dentists over 12 months. This study aims to collect data from 500 dentists, identify areas for enhancement, and develop a strategic action plan to improve record-keeping quality and forensic odontology application, culminating in a comprehensive dental data repository to support legal and criminal investigations in Pakistan. METHODOLOGY: This study employed a mixed-method approach conducted at Hamdard Dental College from January to March 2023. The quantitative phase involved distributing questionnaires to 463 dentists, chosen through stratified random sampling. Out of these, 413 responded, yielding an 86% response rate. These questionnaires focused on dental record-keeping practices and dentists’ awareness of forensic odontology. Subsequently, based on the questionnaire results, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 purposively selected dentists to gain deeper insight into the challenges and potential solutions. Data from both phases were integrated and analyzed accordingly. RESULTS: The study included 413 participants, mainly females (79%), with ages ranging from 27 to 65 years and an average age of 46.4 years. Most dentists had 5–20 years of work experience (53%), and most (87.4%) were practicing in private clinical settings. All the dentists generated medical and dental records, but the duration of their record-keeping varied, with some maintaining them for up to a year and others for two years or longer. Five themes were generated from the qualitative content analysis. These themes were dentists’ perceptions, barriers and challenges, knowledge and awareness, and improvement strategies. CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that local practitioners in Pakistan exhibit subpar practices in dental record-keeping and maintenance of patient history, irrespective of whether they use a digital or traditional file-based system. Even though dentists are cognizant of the importance of record-keeping, they do not actively maintain comprehensive records. This suggests the need for improved training and system improvements to address the gaps in record-keeping practices. BioMed Central 2023-10-24 /pmc/articles/PMC10594786/ /pubmed/37875855 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-023-03500-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Baqai, Haifa Saquib
Zaidi, Syed Jaffar Abbas
Baig, Qaiser Ali
Bashir, Muhammad Bilal
Anwar, Madiha
Ansari, Asma Saher
Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title_full Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title_fullStr Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title_full_unstemmed Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title_short Maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
title_sort maintenance of dental records and awareness of forensic odontology among pakistani dentists: a mixed-method study with implications for dental data repository
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10594786/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37875855
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-023-03500-2
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