Treating Children With Extensive Dental Needs

May 6, 2025 updated by: Malmö University

Dentists' Experiences From Treating Children With Extensive Dental Treatment Needs

The goal of this qualitative study, using Grounded Theory, is to gain deeper knowledge about dentists' experiences from treating in particular young children with an extensive treatment need (mainly due to caries).

The main question is to find out more about the dentists' reactions, feelings, perceived stress, and thoughts in general when meeting and treating young children with many carious lesions. The investigators also want to gain better understanding of how dentists think about reporting children who might be subject for maltreatment.

Study Overview

Status

Enrolling by invitation

Conditions

Detailed Description

BACKGROUND: Severe or extensive caries is a condition that affects a large number of children yearly. This could lead to serious consequences for the affected child such as pain, many dental visits, risk for poorer oral health, and poor esthetics. In many cases, there is a connection to lack of care, whereby dental professionals has an obligation to file a report to social services regarding concerns of maltreatment.

The dental care includes a wide spectrum of measures, from information och oral health preventive actions, to filling therapies and tooth extractions. I many cases the disease is so extensive that the child needs to be referred to a pediatric dentistry specialist clinic in order to get treatment under sedation or general anesthesia. This is more prevalent the younger the child is. Dental treatments performed under general anesthesia or sedation is often more radical and tooth extraction is a common therapy for teeth with extensive decay.

As a dentist, in charge of initial care and treatment, taking care of children who might not know or understand why they have to undergo treatment, or that maybe are scared or suffer from pain, might affect the general wellbeing of the dentist. Perception of stress, especially ethical stress, can further affect how dentists make treatment decisions, among other things. Despite this, the knowledge of how dentists perceive and are affected by meeting and treating children with extensive need for dental care, is unsatisfactory.

RESEARCH QUESTION How do dentists experience meeting and treating children with an extensive need for dental care? How is extensive need for dental care looked upon in relation to potential report to social services?

METHODS AND INFORMANTS This project will use Grounded Theory, that is a qualitative research method. When knowledge and theories are lacking within a certain area, common hypotheses testing methods are less suitable. Instead, by using qualitative research methods, information can be collected from individuals with experience from the area of interest. Some methods, like Grounded Theory, can lead to results that might form a base for formulating hypothesis that later can be tested in studies using quantitative/hypotheses testing methods.

In this project, interviews will be held with dentists (informants) that work within public dental care, and specialised dental care, i.e. specialists in pediatric dentistry. During the interviews a so called thematic interview guide with open themes is used, rather than using semi-structured that might lead what the informants choose to talk about. Intended themes in the interview guide concerns the following: experiences of treating children with extensive need for treatment, reflections upon reporting to social services, experiences of child patients reactions and abilities to handle dental treatment, thoughts about legal guardians being present in the operating room, experiences of different coping strategies, or anything else that the informant brings to the table. Informants will be general dental practitioners working with child dental care, mainly from county of Scania, and specialist in pediatric dentistry or post-graduate students becoming such specialists. The specialist cohort is recruited from all over Sweden.

The investigators plan to interview up to 25 dentists. The informants will be recruited to include different experiences, and backgrounds, e.g. different ages, years as dentist, general dental practitioner or specialist, public dental clinic or private clinic, working in city or rural area.

The interviews will take approximately one hour and will be recorded digitally, and the interviews can be performed both digitally or in a direct meeting, but over telephone is also a possibility. The interviews will be transcribed verbatim and analyzed according to preset routines according to to the chosen method, Grounded Theory. Interviews and analyses takes place parallell. The transcribed interviews will be analyzed, and through these analyses so called categories emerges, that describes what the experiences are about. These codes will then be merged into preliminary categories. In the following axial coding process, the preliminary categories will be further developed by identifying dimensions and characteristics, leading up to sub-categories. Relations data and categories is sought for, thus creating a "new whole". Selective coding will lead to data saturation and validation. The former can also be achieved by re-code already retreived data. In the results, there is also a core category that can be described as the most central and crucial aspects of the research questions being studied.

it is not applicable to calculate sample size when using qualitative method such as Grounded Theory. Instead, participants will be included until saturation in data is achieved, meaning that new information can not any longer be obtained.

KNOWLEDGE GAINS Grounded Theory is a theory generating method, especially suitable for research areas where existing theories are scarce or totally lacking. Today, a lot of research within medical and dental fields takes the investigator's perspective. It is highly crucial that also the directly affected are involved, i.e. the patients.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Estimated)

30

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Sweden
      • Malmö, Sweden, 20506
        • Faculty of Odontology, Malmo University

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Dentists, both general dental practitioners and specialist, or those under training to become specialist in pediatric dentistry.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Dentists, both general dental practitioners and specialist, or those under training to become specialist in pediatric dentistry.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort
Child-treating dentists
Dentists meeting young children with extensive treatment need

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Dentists' attitudes on handling children with extensive treatment need
Time Frame: The data will be collected and analyzed over a period of 12 months.
This study aims to identify and categorize the main themes that emerge from qualitative interviews with dentists who treat children with extensive dental needs. The themes will be derived using grounded theory methodology, focusing on the challenges, strategies, and outcomes associated with providing care to this patient population. By analyzing data, codes will be identified, leading up to conceptual categories that in the end will form a core-category, a new theory.
The data will be collected and analyzed over a period of 12 months.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Malmö University

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Henrik Berlin, PhD, Malmö University, Faculty of Odontology

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

March 26, 2024

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 25, 2025

Study Completion (Estimated)

May 31, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

December 5, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 4, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

March 7, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 7, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 6, 2025

Last Verified

May 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • MAU 2024/122

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

Individual participant data will not be shared.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on Anesthesia, General

Search Similar Trials

Sponsors and Collaborators

Medical Conditions

Drug Interventions

CROs by country

CROs in Suriname

Conditions

Rare Diseases

Drug Interventions

Dietary Supplements

Sponsor/Collaborators

Locations

Subscribe