Behavior of dental assistants managing young children in the operatory.

This paper describes the behavior of 30 dental assistants over 72 appointments in the management of three- to Five-year-old children. Guidance, empathy, verbalization, and physical contact were major provider categories; a dichotomous measure of fear-related behavior was derived from child categories. The distribution of duration and Frequency of behaviors within each category indicate that the assistants did little child management. Lag sequential analyses calculated conditional probabilities For child behavior, given assistant behavior. These probabilities were compared to results when child fear-related behavior was lagged on dentist behavior. Results suggest relative effectiveness o( a set of dental assistant behaviors. Patterns of dentist and assistant management behaviors also were explored.