| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 臺大-復旦EMBA境外專班 === 107 === Orthodontic Treatment has flourished in Taiwan in recent years and has largely expanded the turnover of clinics. Different from the functional-purposed general dental treatment, the orthodontic treatment requires good occlusion of teeth, aesthetics of face and dentition, and the care of patients’ mind and health at the same time. Therefore, the dentist needs to communicate with the patients, so the patients get the medical services with the most appropriate treatment. Orthodontic Treatment has generally been self-paid and oftentimes high-priced, patients hence have higher expectation and criteria toward Orthodontic Treatment medical service quality. The main purpose of this study is to explore the factors that influence the cognitions of patients and dentists’ orthodontic treatment service quality. The result of this study would provide specific recommendations for dentists and dental clinic managers to improve the service quality of Orthodontic Treatment.
The results of the study infer that more than half of the dentists are under the age of 40. The education levels are mainly bachelor''s degrees. More than half of dentists practice in general dental clinics. Furthermore, Taiwan''s orthodontic treatment industry is at the stage of vigorous development, young dentists are willing to engage in this paticular field. However, there is still room for further development in the characteristics and norms for the orthodontic treatment to be a special medical division.
As for the patients, highly educated people are the main customers of orthodontic treatment, or have higher willingness to let their children receive orthodontic treatment. Patients with orthodontic treatment gathered the information mainly from relatives and friends (72.1%), dentists’ advice (42.3%), and only 1% from dental health education information. The result indicates that Orthodontic Treatment has a high correlation with interpersonal networks. In the choice of doctors and clinics, doctors'' medical ethics, family and friends’ advice, service attitudes in the clinic, and transportation convenience are the main considerations. In terms of brace materials, 74.1% use economical metal materials, and 13.4% lack of knowledge about which materials they use. It is inferred that patients care about the curative effect instead of appearances during the treatment, and their decision-making rely on dentists’ advice. In addition, in this study, only 1/4 patients are children, which is very different from the research studies in America and Japan. This result may be caused by the sampling limitation. However, we found the parents’ decision-making is important in their child’s orthodontic treatment decision. Hence, further investigation is needed to understand the parents-child behavior in orthodontic treatment in the future studies.
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