Knowledge and practices of recording and maintaining patients 'dental records among private dental practitioners of Delhi, India

ABSTRACT

Proper recording and keeping dental records are an important part of any dental practice. It helps in improving patient care, has medico-legal importance and play significant role in human identification during mass disasters or criminal offences. Aim: To assess the knowledge and practices of recording and maintaining patients 'records among private dental practitioners of Delhi, India. Methods: Data for this cross-sectional study was collected from 160 dentists of Delhi using a self-administered questionnaire. The face and content validity as well as reliability of questionnaire was tested before the final data collection. A single trained examiner collected all the necessary information via personal visits or google forms. Chi-square test was applied to check the statistically significant difference between the dichotomous independent variables with respect to study participants' responses to the questionnaire. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 34.5 (SD 7.2) years.Digital method of recording patient's data and x-ray storage was more prevalent than manual method among the study participants. Slightly more than 40% of the dentists were keeping patient's records safe for a period of 6 to 10 years. Younger dentists with lesser years of practice were more explicit in recording and correcting patient records. Conclusion: Results of this study shows that private dental practitioners of Delhi are aware of medico-legal importance of dental records. Most of them were recording important findings and history of their patients. Dentists must be educated in two aspects namely correct method of recording and the ideal duration of storing their patients' dental records