Parental assessment of access and barriers to oral and dental health services in the elementry school children in Rasht

Equal access and distribution of services among all people is one of the main objectives of health services and patient satisfaction is an important factor in evaluating these objectives. This study aims to investigate the access and satisfaction of elementary school children to dental services in Rasht.

In this cross-sectional descriptive study, first, we divided different areas of the city into three regions, and  by a simple random sampling method  selected  one school among  the schools in each region.. Data were collected in the questionnaire. The statistical analysis was performed using  SPSS software version 24. Significant  p value was set at 0.05.

In this study, 78% of study subjects had access to dental care and 22.1% faced barriers. High cost of dental treatments and dental fears were the main barriers. 55/9% of parents were satisfied with the dental care provided.

It is concluded that the access of elementry school children to dental services in Rasht is easy and the most important obstacle is child fear of dentistry and high dental costs.