Behavior orientation is the cornerstone of the success of pediatric dentistry. The use of
behavior management techniques enables children to learn appropriate behavior and coping
skills, reduce anxiety, and facilitate the delivery of adequate oral health care. Better
communication can be achieved when children feel the freedom to express themselves. In
the same way, parents may state that in cases where there is no coercion and verbal
communication, the children are uncomfortable and they have problems during their
second-third dentist visits.
However, in some cases, success may not be achieved even if different behavior management
techniques are applied. Activities such as diverting attention in children to other
areas, starting the communication in the waiting room before entering the practice
environment can lead to self-confidence, relaxation and confidence. The method of
rewarding can also be very effective in directing behavior in children. For this reason,
it communicates with a combination of some techniques without depending on only one
technique and can lead to applications in dentistry practice.
Based on this idea, some behavior guidance systems have been tried to be created. On the
basis of the magic game, it has been tried to move the children away from the current
real situation, the reality of dental treatment, to move forward in communication and
successful results have been obtained.
With this information, the aim of our study is to experience a new behavior management
technique in children. The main thing in the technique is to start the communication with
the child in the waiting room of the dentist and to reduce the anxiety of the child by
improving the self-efficacy perception of the child. In this direction, in order to
increase the child's self-efficacy perception, simple questions are asked to the child
about colors, fruits and animals, if necessary, clues are given to give correct answers,
and verbal praise for correct answers aims to increase self-efficacy perception and
reduce anxiety. After the communication is started in the waiting room, the dental
examination, dental chair and planned procedures will be introduced to the child,
together with the tell-show-do method, as always practiced in the dental chair. The aim
of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of question-answer behavior guidance
technique in dental treatment in pediatric patients. Children's pain and anxiety levels
were assessed by various tests designed to purpose. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), a
self-reporting scale,was preferred to evaluate children's experience of pain. The scale
displayed a colored spectrum on the front side ranging from no pain (white) to severe
pain (red), which indicates relevant pain scores ranging from 0 to 10 on the reverse
side.10
