Nazeer Khan, Mohammad A Hattan, Turki Alqahtani.
A survey of patients opinion for business and professional factors affecting private Dental practices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
J Dow Uni Health Sci Jan ;1(1):3-9.

Objective: To assess the criteria identified as important by the patients attending private dental clinics in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Design: A cross sectional survey. Patients and Method: Information was collected on a especially designed questionnaire from 575 patients of 30 private dental clinics, 6 each from 5 regions of Riyadh City. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first part contained demographic information about the patient and the second part listed a set of 16 criteria about the opinion of the patients for a good dental practice in private clinics. Crohnbech`s alpha, chi-square, two-sample `t` and factor analysis were utilized for data analysis. Results: The internal consistency of the respondents, using Crohnbech`s alpha method, was 87.2%. `caring dentist` showed the highest percentage (97.2%) followed by `friendly staff` (95.1%) among the 16 criteria. `Accessible location of the clinic` showed the least percentage (80.3%), while, `pleasant decor and comfortable surroundings` (81.4%) took the second lowest place in the list. Factor analysis created only two groups of criteria (factors). The first group covered the factors, which are related to money, communication, administration and high values of the treatment, while the second group identified those factors, which are related to personality behavior of dentist and staff, professional competence and quality. Conclusion: In general, the patients were more interested to see better communication and behavior of dentists and staff in private practices as compared to public clinics.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com