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Compare and contrast the private practice model of providing dental care and the dental public health model.
Private practice model: their purpose is to maximize the dental interests of individual people. Their work content is to provide personal dental health services for patients to improve their dental health. The practitioner is concerned with risk-benefit calculus for individual patients. Their practitioner's primary moral obligation is to individual patients, the idea is the provision of state of the art services. They believe that the patients specific needs are relevant for decision making during their treatment. They measure their outcomes based on the change in the patient at the end of the treatment.
Dental public health model: their purpose is to maximize the dental health status of a population, community, or public. Their work content is to develop, implement, and evaluate dental health programs and to create health services for improving the public's oral health. Their practitioner is concerned with relative cost benefits of different community interventions of strategies. They believe that the practitioner is obliged to think in terms of how best to allocate community resources. With use of appropriate technology, which may not be state of the art. they are focused on population based measures. They measure their outcomes in terms of community change.



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Differences in models
Private Dental Health Model

  • Focus on individual patient needs.
  • Offers state of the art services.
  • Includes patient in decision making.


Dental Public Health Model
  • Focus on population, community, or public.
  • Concerned with cost benefits.
  • Concerned with appropriate technology that is not always state of the art.

Similarities in models
  • Improve or maintain health.
  • Measure in terms of change.