Practices participating in a dental PBRN have substantial and advantageous diversity even though as a group they have much in common with dentists at large

Abstract

BackgroundPractice-based research networks offer important opportunities to move recent advances into routine clinical practice. If their findings are not only generalizable to dental practices at large, but can also elucidate how practice characteristics are related to treatment outcome, their importance is even further elevated. Our objective was to determine whether we met a key objective for The Dental Practice-Based Research Network (DPBRN): to recruit a diverse range of practitioner-investigators interested in doing DPBRN studies.MethodsDPBRN participants completed an enrollment questionnaire about their practices and themselves. To date, more than 1100 practitioners from the five participating regions have completed the questionnaire. The regions consist of: Alabama/Mississippi, Florida/Georgia, Minnesota, Permanente Dental Associates, and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). We tested the hypothesis that there are statistically significant differences in key characteristics among DPBRN practices, based on responses from dentists who participated in DPBRN's first network-wide study (n = 546).ResultsThere were statistically significant, substantive regional differences among DPBRN-participating dentists, their practices, and their patient populations.ConclusionAlthough as a group, participants have much in common with practices at large; their substantial diversity offers important advantages, such as being able to evaluate how practice differences may affect treatment outcomes, while simultaneously offering generalizability to dentists at large. This should help foster knowledge transfer in both the research-to-practice and practice-to-research directions.

General Dentists' Use of Isolation Techniques during Root Canal Treatment: From the National Dental Practice-based Research Network

“…Additionally, although the response rate was very good, it is possible that non-respondents would have reported different behavior. Furthermore, although network practitioners have much in common with dentists at large(31, 32), it is possible that their RCT procedures are not representative of dentists at large. Additionally, network members are not recruited randomly, so factors associated with network participation (e.g., an interest in clinical research) may make network dentists unrepresentative of dentists at large.…”

Concordance between patient satisfaction and the dentist's view

“…The network has a wide representation of practice types, treatment philosophies, and patient populations, including diversity regarding race, ethnicity, geography and rural/urban area of residence of both its practitioners and their patients. Analyses of these characteristics confirm that network dentists have much in common with dentists at large (19),while also offering substantial diversity in these characteristics (20). …”

Surface characteristics and lesion depth and activity of suspicious occlusal carious lesions

“…While we cannot assert that network dentists are entirely representative, we can state that they have much in common with dentists at large, while also offering substantial diversity in these characteristics. This assertion is warranted because: 1) substantial percentages of network general dentists are represented in the various response categories of the characteristics in the Enrollment Questionnaire; 2) findings from several network studies document that network general dentists report patterns of diagnosis and treatment that are similar to patterns determined from non-network general dentists 25–30 and 3) the similarity of network dentists to non-network dentists using the 2010 ADA Survey of Dental Practice 31 .…”