Purpose: To determine the association between clinical decision-making approaches and personal and professional background factors.
Materials and methods: An electronic questionnaire was sent to 550 dentists and dental students all over Saudi Arabia from October 2019 to January 2020. The questionnaire assessed personal and professional background factors in addition to three different clinical scenarios, and each participant was asked to rate the importance of some factors that might affect clinical decision-making on a visual analog scale (VAS). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed to assess the association between the exposure variables (background and professional factors) and the outcome variables, which were the three clinical decision-making approaches (patient-related, clinical-case, and operator-related factors). Regression coefficients (B), 95% CI, and the adjusted R2 of the models were calculated.
Results: A total of 420 participants responded to the questionnaire (76.36% response rate). Clinical-case factors had the highest mean scores, while the operator-related factors had the lowest mean scores. Men were significantly less likely than women to consider any factor decisive (P < .001). General dentists and specialists other than prosthodontists/restorative dentists assigned significantly lower importance to operator-related factors (P = .003) and clinical-case factors (P = .005). However, there was no statistically significant difference between undergraduate students and prosthodontists/restorative dentists in considering all decisive factors.
Conclusion: Clinical-case factors were of greater importance compared to operator- and patient-related factors. General practitioners and specialists other than prosthodontists/restorative dentists gave lower attention to operator-related and clinical-case approaches, while experienced dentists showed greater importance to clinical-case and operator-related factors.