It is a part of medicine that is responsible for the study, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, disorders, and conditions that affect the teeth.
Published in Chapter:
Quality Management in Primary Dental Care: Methods and Challenges
A. I. Syngelakis (Faculty of Dentistry, University of Athens, Greece & Department of Dentistry, European University of Cyprus, Cyprus),
Maria Kamariotou (University of Macedonia, Greece), Fotis C. Kitsios (University of Macedonia, Greece), Chrystala Charalambous (European University of Cyprus, Cyprus), and Argy Polychronopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5442-5.ch010
Abstract
In dental care services, quality is an important factor that affects decision making, the planning of health strategies and policies, the cost of health services, and the evaluation of them. The evaluation of quality in dental services using the assessment methods that are used in other services of primary healthcare is difficult due to the special characteristics of dentistry. However, the improvement and the evaluation of primary oral healthcare services is a complicated issue because it involves many factors that affect it. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to provide a complete overview of the literature using Webster and Watson's methodology. Fifty peer-reviewed papers were analyzed and the results of this review revealed that the number of publications in this domain has increased in the last decade, and there is a need to foster research (especially empirical) in this field.