NCT05284279

Early Childhood Caries and Health Professionals' Perception: a Qualitative Research Protocol to Assess Oral Health Stigma

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 30 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Hospices Civils de Lyon · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: —
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Dental caries is the most common non-communicable disease in childhood. Disease management of caries rests on surgical treatment as well as various preventive strategies such as fluoridation, sealants, personal counselling... With other non-communicable diseases (obesity, overweight…), it has been demonstrated that health professionals' negative perceptions of their patients could affect disease management quality. Concerning dental caries, some data might suggest that discriminating believes and behaviours toward children with dental caries and their families exist in the medical setting. However, oral health related stigma remains an unexplored issue. This study would be the first to our knowledge to specifically address the question of stigmatisation and discrimination of patients with dental caries. The present project is to conduct an exploratory study focusing on perceptions and attitudes of health professionals toward children with early childhood caries and their parents. The questions the study aims to answer are: (i) What are health professionals 'perceptions of children with ECC and their family? And (ii) according to health professionals, do these perceptions influence the quality of their care? We hypothesize that some practitioners have negative opinions on children with ECC and their parents, affecting the quality of their care, especially concerning oral health prevention. Method: Individual semi-structured interviews will be conducted among dentists (general or pediatric), general practitioners and paediatricians.

Conditions

• Early Childhood Caries (ECC)

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Exploring health professionals' perceptions of patients with ECC using semi-structured interviews	Following a literature review on the topic of children with ECC and their family, a guidebook will be built by main investigators. Several test interviews will be conduct to ensure that guidebook is adapted, and that the interviewer is enough trained. Interview will be conducted by one or two of the main investigators. As much as possible, they will be performed face to face or using videoconference due to COVID19 pandemic context. All the interviews will be audio recorded. The interviewer will take notes including non-verbal communication; and will adopt an active listening position. After collecting respondents' characteristics (age, gender, profession, exercise duration, type of practice), the subsequent themes will be explored: disease perception, educational context's responsibility, barriers and facilitators to family behaviour changes, health professional's emotional consequences.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-06-01
• Primary completion: 2022-12-01
• Completion: 2023-09-01
• First posted: 2022-03-17
• Last updated: 2022-03-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France