How Danish dentists and dental hygienists handle their role in child abuse and neglect matters

Abstract

Objective: To identify how the dental team perceives its role in safeguarding children, to identify barriers to referral to social services, to compare data with data previously reported from Denmark, and to assess if increased focus on safeguarding children has had an effect on how the dental team handles its responsibility to refer to social services. Material and methods:The study is based on a Danish version of a questionnaire previously used in Scotland and Denmark. The questionnaire was sent to a random sample of the Danish dental team.Results: The number of returned questionnaires was 964 (67.0 %) with valid data. Of these, 40.8%had had a suspicion of child abuse or neglect and 50.0 % had referred their concern to social services. Frequently reported barriers to referral were uncertainty about observations, signs, and symptoms of abuse and neglect, and uncertainty about referral procedures. A total of 84 (8.9%) of the respondents had received both undergraduate and postgraduate training on the topic, and 64.4% of the respondents found that the dental staff could recognize signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect.Conclusion: Findings suggest a continuous need for a focus on the awareness and training of the Danish dental staff on the important topic of child abuse and neglect.

Dental professionals' experience with and handling of suspicion of child maltreatment in a small‐scale society, the Faroe Islands

“…In accordance with theoretically and empirically‐derived properties of small‐scale societies, we found dental professionals' handling of suspicion of child maltreatment to be different in the Faroe Islands compared to large‐scale societies, like Denmark (Uldum et al, ; Uldum et al, ), Croatia (Cukovic‐Bagic et al, ) and Scotland (Cairns et al, ). Especially, suspicion of child maltreatment was experienced much more frequently by Faroese dental professional than by their Danish, Scottish, and Croatian colleagues.…”

“…The data reported in the present study were obtained by the use of the Danish version of the original questionnaire, designed by Cairns and coworkers (Cairns et al, ), which has previously been used in two studies carried out in Denmark (Uldum et al, ; Uldum et al, ). The questionnaire was translated from Danish to Faroese by a qualified dentist with a mastery of the Faroese language.…”

“…Dentists and dental hygienists are in a unique position to notice symptoms of child maltreatment, as 50 to 70% of all abused children have visible injuries on the head or in the neck region (Cairns, Mok, & Welbury, 2005a;Jesse, 1995;Welbury & Murphy, 1998). However, previous studies indicate a lack of knowledge in the professional dental teams on how to handle suspicions, including barriers and lack of knowledge about procedures for reporting such suspicions (Brattabo, Iversen, Astrom, & Bjørknes, 2016;Cairns, Mok, & Welbury, 2005b;Cukovic-Bagic et al, 2015;Drigeard, Nicolas, Hansjacob, & Roger-Leroi, 2012;Hashim & Al-Ani, 2013;Kaur et al, 2016;Laud, Gizani, Maragkou, Welbury, & Papagiannoulis, 2013;Mogaddam, Kamal, Merdad, & Alamoudi, 2016;Owais, Qudeimat, & Qodceih, 2009;Uldum, Christensen, Welbury, & Poulsen, 2010;Uldum, Christensen, Welbury, & Haubek, 2017). The available reports on this topic are all conducted in large-scale societies, but one of these (Brattabo et al, 2016) showed that public dental health personnel working in smaller municipalities (≤ 10,000 inhabitants) reported suspicion of child maltreatment less frequently than dental public health personnel working in larger municipalities.…”

Recognition of child physical abuse by a group of Brazilian primary care health professionals

“…Although Brazilian dentists generally do not receive prior training in recognizing and reporting cases of abuse, in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America, this training is a requirement. Even so, some studies done in other countries comparing dentists with other categories show that dentists usually identify less cases . The composition of this entire reasoning leads to a question that is not yet well clarified in the literature: What are the associated factors and difficulties dentists have in matching other professional categories in the recognition of cases of CPA?…”

“…Efforts are needed on the part of academia, the public authorities, and health professionals to gain an understanding of the factors related to the difficulties dentists have in identifying cases of abuse. Some studies pointed out the difficulties of dentists to recognize cases of abuse, demonstrating that there is a fear of the professionals of worsening the situation of the child, fear that the relationship with the family will be shaken, fear of retaliation, among others …”