Dental/dental hygiene trainees discuss social determinants of health, treatment costs, and bias. (2023)
There’s this article on the American Dental Association [website], just I think dental students did it. It was about how in the U.S. here, if someone is on Medicaid or something, in a minority group, why would they feel reluctant to go to a dental office? Because they had actual people interviewed, and they said even the receptionist would be biased towards me. She didn’t even say because of a minority group. No, she said because something like Medicaid, knowing maybe the dental office won’t make so much profit. That’s the thing with dentistry, at one point you are kind of self-regulated. I’m not going to say it’s intentional because this anticipation is like you’re not a bad person, but it’s you’re just human. And when you see things often more than not, you anticipate this is what you’re probably going to see. So, a lot of cutting corner[s] starts to happen. It’s that, “Well, I know this population doesn’t really want to invest a lot of money, doesn’t really want to invest a lot of time.” So they would [. . .] And we do have power insinuating which is the best treatment for you. Legally, we’ll provide all options, but we’ll highlight what we think is best. And that’s our responsibility ethically. So, maybe we’ll cut corners and see, “Okay. Well, maybe this is best for you,” just because I have this, maybe it’s prejudice. I don’t know, but this pre-thought that maybe you’re more like this. But that’s not really fair, is it?