THE DENTIST’S ROLE IN SCREENING CHILD ABUSE

Abstract

Child abuse is unfortunately present in France and remains a taboo and unknown subject for some professionals such as dentists. Moreover, most dentists do not realise the importance of their position in detecting child abuse. From bibliographic research and a survey of French and Spanish dentists, we obtain a broken-down picture of the professional’s knowledge on how to deal with a possible screening in the office in both neighbouring countries. There is a clear lack of training on the subject: the attitudes and lesions to be noticed, what to do and, most importantly, the reporting procedure. Consequently, there is a need for awareness raising and restructuring with the aim of improving training on this subject, setting up standardised protocols and making information available to all dental colleagues.