Dental PBRN Enrollment Questionnaire Results

1
Dental PBRN Enrollment Questionnaire Results

K.A. Spivey, S.K. Makhija, G.H. Gilbert for
the DPBRN Collaborative Group

Background
Results
What is DPBRN?
The National Institutes of Health-National
Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research
funded three oral health practice-based research
networks (PBRNs), of which "The Dental PBRN"
(DPBRN) is one. DPBRN is a consortium of
participating practices and dental organizations
committed to advancing knowledge of dental
practice and ways to improve it. Essentially, it
is "practical science" done about, in, and for
the benefit of "real world" daily clinical
practice. To date, DPBRN has enrolled over 1,100
dentists. Practice-based research networks are
essential to both practitioners and academicians
in translating research into practice.
Describing members in DBPRN is helpful in
conducting studies that are relevant to daily
practice, increasing their input, and stimulating
further research.   The purpose of this analysis
is to compare responses to a survey by DPBRN
dentists to those in the 2001 Survey in Dental
Practice conducted by the American Dental
Association (ADA), in which dentists reported on
status in the year 2000. This investigation
allows for the comparison of the dentists in the
DPBRN to dentists throughout the country.

• An affiliation of dentists in private practice
  that investigates research questions.
• This network of dentists works with a dental
  school which serves as an administrative base.
• DPBRN conducts research that is relevant to the
  real world of private practice, where the
  majority of the population receives its dental
  care.
• The mission Improving dental and oral health by
  conducting dental practice-based research and by
  serving dentists and their patients.

Hypothesis
Our hypothesis is that the responses given by the
DPBRN practitioners in the enrollment survey will
not be statistically different from the responses
given by dentists throughout the United States to
the ADA survey administered in 2001.
Methods
The Dental PBRN comprises dental offices in the
United States and Scandinavia that are committed
to advancing knowledge of dental practice and
ways to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.
Our network includes over 1,100
practitioner-investigators from Alabama,
Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Oregon (Permanente
Dental Associates), Minnesota (HealthPartners
organization and private practitioners) and the
Scandinavian countries of Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden.
As part of the enrollment process the
participating dentists complete a 101-item
enrollment questionnaire covering topics such as
hours spent in direct patient care, time spent
performing certain dental procedures, and ideas
for future DPBRN projects. The responses from
DPBRN practitioners were analyzed along with the
responses from practitioners who participated in
the ADA survey asking the same questions. The
SAS program was used to analyze the data,
comparing the two groups of practitioners, with
the chi-square test and the t-test (for the
means) used to determine if there were any
differences (plt0.05).
Conclusion
DPBRN dentists are comparable to dentists
nationally. There were no categories with any
major differences between these two groups.
Co-authors in the DPBRN Collaborative Group can
be found at www.DentalPBRN.org