Inadequacies in history taking and clinical examination by the dentists

ABSTRACT

History taking and clinical examination are the most important steps in the diagnosis and hence overall patient management in medicine, surgery and dentistry. The purpose of this study was to determine the history taking and clinical examination practices of dentists. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed among two hundred randomly selected dentists of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The questionnaire assessed how often these dentists recorded all the steps of history and how often they examined their patients thoroughly. While the vast majority of dentists asked most of their patient's demographics, chief complaint and the history of their chief complaint and examined all teeth of their patients, a considerable number of them missed the medical, family and socioeconomic history, did not record vital signs, and did not examine the entire head and neck and oral mucosa of all their patients. This study emphasizes deficiencies and inadequacies in the history taking and clinical examination practices of dentists in the studied sample