Quality of life, mentalization, and perception of challenging encounters in dentistry

The dental profession is a complex profession which requires both technical and interpersonal skills in handling diverse treatment situations. Among these skills, emotional competence has been identified as an important factor. This study investigates how a facet of emotional competence, mentalization capability, in dentists and dental students affects the perceptions of challenging patients encounters, and how this correlates with the practitioners’ quality of life. Data was collected with an online questionnaire, a total of 165 dentists and dental students in Norway participated in this cross-sectional study. The results show that dentists experience more frequent meetings with patients they classify as challenging then dental students. Those who have a higher total exposure of challenging encounters, reported lower quality of life. Dentists with more years of work experience perceive aggressive patients as less challenging than dental practitioners with less experience, while happy patients are perceived more challenging with more years of experience. Dental practitioners who hypermentalize and are “over-confident” with regards to their patients’ mental states, perceive encounters with critical and anxious patients as less challenging than those who are less confident. In contrast, dental practitioners who hypomentalize and are “under-confident” with regards to their patients’ mental states, perceive encounters with critical and anxious patients as more challenging than those who are more confident. These findings imply that there is a link between challenging encounters in dental practice and quality of life of dental practitioners. Also, mentalization capabilities appears to impact the perception of challenging encounters in dental practice.