Dental Indemnity Insurance

Running head: DENTAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE
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Dental indemnity insurance
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

DENTAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE 2
Introduction
1.1 Introduction:
In a health system, professional indemnity insurance is a program that can protect the
health professionals from any obligation that is forced on them as a result of committing any
errors or malpractice of treatment procedures or not obeying the legal issues related to patient
care (Karl, Born & Viscusi, 2016). The dental indemnity insurance covers acts or errors made by
the professionals in the course of their duty. It involves misdiagnosis, physical or mental harm,
or delays in referral, any injury to a patient. Nowadays, the common people are more aware of
their rights- legal literacy supported by new legislation has increased this among them. In recent
years, the claims are made for personal injuries such as road accidents, in health services or in
workplace. These issues become sensitive as some doctors perform malpractice, misuse their
power, unnecessary recommend tests and treatments (Bhanushali, Shivakumar, & Kadashetti,
2018). Several studies reported that health experts do not take any responsibility of the medical
liability regarding the health practice issue.
1.2 Objective of the study:
This paper focuses on the reviewing of the articles related to the attitude, practice, and
knowledge about health care practitioners to professional indemnity insurance.
1.3 Significance of the study:
Current scenario revealed that the judicial authorities are more consumers friendly and
hospitals are liable to compensate for their mistake. Therefore, there is an increased necessity to
provide protection to the doctors from the rising financial risk. For this reason, a special financial

DENTAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE 3
protection, known as professional indemnity insurance, is implemented. The insurance ensures
legal liability arising from committing any mistakes on the part of Registered Dental
practitioners at the time of service execution. The dental profession confessed extraordinary
changes during the last decade. Nonetheless, any distinct legal cases do not exist. Though,
practicing dentistry has transformed, affecting the health care process both in a positive and
negative way. There is an increased population facing the problem regarding dentist’s authority
planning of care and consent issues. The patients are more conscious and demand better facilities
and want more information about their treatments that are supposed to provide them and aware
in both ways ranging from inadequate and inappropriate to a serious issue regarding dental
malpractice and negligence. Therefore, the dental indemnity insurance was implemented to
protect the dentists from any legal issue arising from conducting any mistakes or malpractice.
Hence, the professionals must be aware and should keep detailed knowledge of this insurance
(Shimpi et al., 2018).
2.1 Theoretical framework
The aim of this systemic review literature about dental indemnity insurance is based on a
theoretical model. This framework will explain the perception, knowledge, and practice of the
dentists towards “dental indemnity insurance”. It, in turn, will assist in categorizing the factors
influencing the idea through a literature review. Thematic analysis using grounded theory
approach will be applied in this qualitative research (Mohan & Ravindran, 2018). It highlights
analyzing, interpreting, and detecting patterns within data. These themes are different categories
of this study. A conceptual model explaining the attitude, practice, and knowledge are organized
by different areas. They include academic and technical proficiency, professional attitude, social
and community coordination, awareness of the insurance, perception about this indemnity. The

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factors influencing the necessity of structuring this insurance were examined using different
parameters such as knowledge of the dentists, that means if the dentists were aware of this
insurance or not. The second one was an outlook that includes how they reflect the usefulness of
the dental indemnity bond in their workplace. Finally, the last parameter considering the fact was
implementation of that insurance in their practical environment. All these factors together
provide a detailed exploration to evaluate the knowledge, perception and practice of dental health
professionals to dental indemnity coverage.
2.2 Literature review
Dental insurance knowledge:
Gupta et al., (2014) stated that a dentist needed to be aware of the policies related to the
professional career of the dentist and avoid violation of legalities. The objective of their study
was to assess the awareness and practice of dental indemnity insurance among health
professionals in Mumbai city. The methodology used by them was a cross-sectional survey of
306 dentists where the participants were selected by random sampling and consist of
practitioners who have either completed bachelor's or master's degrees in dentistry from private
or government sector. The data was collected through a questionnaire on their details and their
knowledge about of indemnity insurance, and the data was analyzed using SPSS software and
Chi-square. The findings showed a significant association between professional liability
insurance and increasing age, qualification, practice years, knowledge about the insurance and
dentist working in private sector. Among the participants, 35.6% of dentists did not feel that
knowing about the insurance is mandatory for every dentist, and 13.6% of dentist were
uninterested in knowing about the insurance (Gupta et al., 2014). Finally, they concluded that