Dutch dentists' views of informed consent: a replication study.

The aim of this study was to replicate a previous study on informed consent in dental practice, because of the low response-rate of that study. The present study assessed Dutch dentists' knowledge, their attitudes and self-efficacy towards the principle of informed consent, by means of a strongly shortened version of the questionnaire used in the original study. This questionnaire was sent to 384 Dutch dental practitioners; 60.2% of them responded. The results obtained in this study are highly comparable with the results of the original study, thereby increasing the confidence in the outcomes. Results of both studies indicate that dentists still have problems with some aspects of informed consent. Specifically, dentists' fear for legal procedures and the difficulty they have with informing immigrant patients warrants further attention.