Patient satisfaction with out-of-hours dental services

This is the first comparative study of patient satisfaction with different out-of-hours dental services.There was overall service satisfaction, particularly with the dentist-patient encounter, but walk-in out-of-hours services were perceived as harder to access than those based on telephone access.Walk-in emergency treatment sessions may also be cost-inefficient, since almost half of attending patients felt they would have been 'happy with advice plus a reliable appointment when surgeries re-opened'.Some key questions are suggested that might be included in a shorter and more meaningful satisfaction instrument for out-of-hours dental patients.For better service design, future research should try to explan the main sources of dissatisfaction.