The General Dental Council (GDC) has published its Public Research 2020 report which captures the views of the public on a wide range of issues.
The independent research revealed that, as in previous years, satisfaction with dental care and treatment overall remains very high (96 per cent). However, the 2020 survey included a boost of people from ethnic minority backgrounds which was designed to improve insight into potentially different experiences. This discovered satisfaction was statistically significantly lower (91 per cent) amongst ethnic minorities overall, and the results indicate that Black people are the least likely (83 per cent) to be satisfied.
Reacting to the findings, GDC executive director of strategy, Stefan Czerniawski, said, “It is reassuring that satisfaction levels overall remain very high, but the significantly lower levels amongst people from ethnic minority backgrounds are a cause for concern. This is an important challenge to all of us involved in dentistry as we have a shared responsibility to ensure equality in the provision of dental services.
“For the GDC’s part, we are increasing our focus on big data analysis to better enable the identification of important issues like this, and the new insight this provides will enable us to work with partners towards addressing problems.”
The full report is available from the GDC’s Research Library.