European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

BACKGROUND- Practicing medicine in India has revolutionized during the last five decades affecting the healthcare delivery in both positive and negative directions. The doctor-patient relationship has undergone a transition throughout the ages. The perception has been changing due to some malpractices of doctors; people started looking at doctor's community with distrust. Thus a health care professional must know about medico-legal problems to protect oneself from legal issues. OBJECTIVES- To evaluate the knowledge attitude and practice of medico-legal problems among dentist practitioners residing in Vidharbha region. METHODS- The cross sectional study was done in a Private Dental College and were assessed through a self-administered, pretested, validated, close ended, unstructured questionnaire. It was made available to all levels of dentistry being under graduates, post graduates, staff and interns. Data was collected , entered in excel sheet and analyzed using SPSS-21 version. RESULTS- A total of 180 of 181 dentists participated in this study. A total of 92 respondents were males and 88 were females. Lack of knowledge among dental professionals was highlighted in this present study having a poor result of 53.3% regarding the medico legal issues. It was found that only 45.5% of the dental practitioners had knowledge regarding the importance of dental record keeping, which was unsatisfactory. The overall grading showed that majority participants had poor knowledge with fair attitude and practices. CONCLUSION- It was found that majority of the respondents had poor knowledge about medico legal issues. Therefore, it is recommended that Continuing Dental Education and Continuing Medical Education programs should be conducted frequently to create awareness and reinforce practice to safeguard against medico legal issues in dentistry