Absenteeism in clinical dental treatment: the case of a Community Dental Service (MSC) - UFRGS dentistry school

Abstract

A community dental service (MSC), integrating UFRGS Dentistry School is one of the fields where graduate students practice public health actions. The program is financed by Brazilian public health system (SUS), intending to offer dental treatment to schoolchildren from the area. Dentistry students promote educational and preventive actions at public schools and refer those who need curative interventions to MSC. The objective of this study is to identify the reasons for why schoolchildren/adolescents are absent in such dental treatment; fiftynine participants were interviewed, all of them regularly attending public schools covered by the program; among them, twenty-four were absent in dental treatment appointment; in addition to interviews, fourty-eight families were visited, including absents and presents, in order to better understand the reality faced by this population; qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted showing that several reasons contribute to the phenomenon such as feelings like fear and anxiety, people's perceptions about health services and these people's beliefs and values of oral health; absenteeism was identified as part of a wider social process: the social deprivation which permeates all Brazilian society.