PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES INVOLVED IN PROVIDING DENTAL TREATMENT TO MEDICALLY COMPROMISED PATIENTS
Providing dental care for medically compromised patients creates often highly charged psychological issues for both patients and care providers. This research explores some of these issues.
A major concern of both dental patients and dental care providers in relation to medically compromised patients is infection control. Dental care providers worry about the possibility that they may become infected from one of their patients. Patients who are not medically compromised fear that a dental care provider may transmit an infection to them from a prior medically compromised patient. Medically compromised patients are apprehensive about receiving the quality of care they required as a consequence of dental care provider concerns related to the medical conditions of the patients.
Hepatitis B and AIDS (acquired immunity deficiency syndrome) are two conditions that cause psychological stress for both dental care givers and patients. Other conditions of concern within this context are influenza, tuberculosis, and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. Infection control guidelines for dental care givers have been developed to both preclude the spread of infection and to allay fears of the spread of infection. These guidelines provide for the use of screening strategies, barrier techniques, instrument handling and sterilization, infectious waste disposal, and the immunization of dental care givers where such immunizations are available.
An important aspect of a screening strategy is the identification of medically compromised patients and the exact nature of their conditions. Those patients found to be infectious and whose dental care needs are elective in character should be deferred for treatment until they are non-infectious. In the contemporary period, infectious diseases frequently are associated with one another in ...