What Complaints Reveal: Dental Patient Complaints

According to the Patient complaints in dentistry: A qualitative meta-synthesis, published by PLOS on November 12, 2026, qualitative analysis of dental patient complaints identified four connected concerns: impeded access, unsatisfactory communication and attitudes, deficient clinical treatment, and unethical or unprofessional conduct.

The 2026 PLOS study interpreted complaints as signals of threats to trust, patient agency, relational security, and professional obligations, rather than only as isolated dissatisfaction events.

• The PLOS researchers screened 857 studies and included 19 studies after full-text review in the meta-synthesis conducted and updated through August 26, 2026.
• The PLOS study found deficient clinical treatment in all 19 included studies, representing 100% of the qualitative evidence base.
• The PLOS study found unethical and unprofessional conduct in 17 of 19 included studies, representing 89% of the evidence base.
• The PLOS researchers reported that all four complaint domains appeared together in 11 of the 19 included studies.
• A patient quoted in the PLOS study summarized a communication failure as follows: "the sort of person who got you into the surgery, said ‘Hi’, got the drill out and started almost straightaway."

The 2026 PLOS meta-synthesis found that dental patient complaints describe four interrelated domains rather than one universal complaint category.

The researchers followed the six-step qualitative synthesis approach associated with Sandelowski and Barroso, searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and CINAHL, and used reflexive thematic analysis to interpret findings from eligible studies.

The PLOS researchers searched the health databases in September 2024 and updated the search on August 26, 2026. The researchers limited inclusion to English-language peer-reviewed studies focused on formally documented complaints about general dental care.

The PLOS analysis treated complaints as qualitative evidence of how patients experienced care. The researchers examined patient quotations and interpreted both semantic meanings, such as long waits, and latent meanings, such as perceived disregard or weakened trust.

The four domains identified by the PLOS study were:

• Impeded access to dental care included appointment availability, waiting times, inaccessible premises, administrative problems, and financial concerns.
• Unsatisfactory communication, interactions, and attitudes included poor explanations, unclear costs, technical language, inadequate listening, rudeness, and insufficient empathy.
• Deficient clinical treatment included concerns about treatment quality, pain, treatment planning, aftercare, infection control, and patient safety.
• Unethical and unprofessional conduct included failures of informed consent, dishonesty, negligence, discrimination, fraud, poor accountability, and other breaches of professional obligations.

Dental organizations can use qualitative complaint analysis to move from counting incidents to understanding the conditions that produce distrust.

The PLOS researchers concluded that complaints may indicate a breakdown in the fiduciary patient-practitioner relationship. That interpretation means a complaint about a delayed appointment may also communicate that the patient’s time and needs were not valued, while a complaint about unclear treatment costs may communicate reduced agency and transparency.

The PLOS study reported that clinical concerns appeared across all complaint-source subgroups, while access concerns were absent from litigation-based studies. The researchers interpreted that difference as a possible effect of legal framing, which shows why cross-segment analysis matters.

A practical research workflow should preserve the original narrative, code the explicit issue, interpret the underlying meaning, and compare themes across complaint sources, locations, patient groups, and care settings.

Researchers should also retain methodological caution. The PLOS authors noted heterogeneity across healthcare systems, regulatory environments, complaint sources, and qualitative methods, and they warned that the synthesis was not designed to produce population-level prevalence estimates.

• Use complaint narratives to identify service-design problems such as appointment access, scheduling, waiting, and follow-up.
• Separate communication failures from clinical-treatment concerns while allowing one complaint to carry multiple meanings.
• Compare online reviews, regulatory complaints, litigation claims, interviews, and open-ended surveys instead of treating one source as representative of all patients.
• Use patient quotations as evidence of meaning, not merely as illustrative anecdotes.
• Treat AI-generated themes as an analytic aid that requires researcher review, especially for ethical, clinical, and safety-sensitive interpretation.

The November 2026 PLOS meta-synthesis shows that dental complaints can reveal interconnected failures in access, communication, clinical treatment, and professional conduct. For dental researchers and patient experience teams, qualitative analysis makes those relationships visible and creates a stronger basis for service improvement than complaint counts alone.

AI-enabled qualitative research can accelerate the review of large complaint corpora, compare themes across segments, and help teams retrieve the evidence behind conclusions. Researchers should combine that speed with human review, reflexivity, privacy safeguards, and careful attention to patient voice.

Use Evidano to turn dental complaints, interviews, reviews, and open-ended survey responses into structured qualitative insight. Try Evidano for free.