Quality of Life of Academic Dentists’ Families; a Cross-Sectional Survey

Background and objectives Quality of the social family of dentists has not been given much attention in literature. Further, the quality of dental academics’ families has never been investigated before. The aim of this study is to assess some aspects of the quality of life among academic dentists’ families and to investigate the factors that may influence their quality of life. Methods This study was based on an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was composed of two parts; the first part was directed to academic and non-academic dentists asking them about relevant demographic/professional data, and the second part was directed to their family members asking them about social, cultural, financial and health-related issues. Data were analyzed to obtain descriptive statistics and determine significance of association of different variables. Findings A total of 125 dentists (academics=37, non-academics=88) participated in the survey together with their family members. Most of the social aspects were satisfactorily prevailing in families of both groups, however, statistically significant differences were found in some financial aspects indicating that non-academics’ families live a more well-off life style. Conclusions Families of academic and non-academic dentists showed comparable quality of life, however, they were affected by similar trends affecting families nowadays like long hours of internet usage, obesity, and waterpipe smoking, the latter was exclusively found in non-academic dentists’ families.