Assessment of parental acceptance towards different non-pharmacological behaviour management techniques in pediatric dental care—a cross-sectional study

Abstract

It is imperative to manage children with empathy and concern for their well-being in order to carry out any dental procedure smoothly. Owing to the inherent fear of dental operatory, behaviour management of children is an important aspect of pediatric dental care. Many techniques are available to help manage the behaviour of children. It is, however important to educate parents about these techniques and to get their cooperation for these techniques to be used on their children.This study aimed to familiarize the parents with non-pharmacological behavior management techniques and to determine the parental acceptance of such techniques in children seeking dental treatment in specialty care dental units. A total of 303 parents were evaluated through online questionnaires in this research. They were shown videos of randomly selected non-pharmacologic behaviour management techniques including tell-show-do, positive reinforcement, modelling and voice control. Parents were asked to watch the videos and give their response on seven-items inquiring about their acceptance levels regarding the respective techniques. The responses were recorded on a Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. According to parental acceptance score (PAS), positive reinforcement was the most accepted technique whereas voice control was the least acceptable technique. Majority of the parents were more receptive towards those techniques that involved a healthy and friendly communication between a dentist and the pediatric patient such as, positive reinforcement, tell show do and modelling. Most significantly the people having low socio-economic status (SES) in Pakistan were more acceptable of voice control than people with high SES.