SHORT COMMUNICATION The relationship between learned resourcefulness and coping with crying in pediatric dentistry: a pilot study

It is an acquired repertoire of behavioral and cognitive skills a person uses to regulate internal events that might otherwise interfere with the execution of "instrumental" behavior. In dentistry one common intense and stressful situation often interfering with treatment is the crying child. Attitudes affect the dentist’s response to the crying child; the dentist’s greater sense of personal responsibility in turn leads to more persistent behavior. Training dentists to assume that their performance is determined largely by effort could make them more resistant to the effects of decreased control. Thus dentists should acquire skills that allow them to perceive "uncontrollable" situations in alternate ways. Both Elsbach 3 and Martinez4 agree that the crying child creates a stressful situation that may interfere with the normal course of treatment. Elsbach defined four types of crying: fear-motivated crying accompanied by hysterical behavior; pain-motivated crying; compensatory-motivated crying; and steady state siren-like crying. Each of these stressful situations represents the child’s effort to control the interaction and offers a serious challenge to the treating dentist. Effective coping entails curtailing the crying, facilitating cooperative behavior, and resuming treatment. In a series of studies, Rosenbaum et al. reported that high LR subjects tolerated better laboratory-induced pain, coped better with seasickness, coped more effectively with epileptic seizures, and coped better during childbirth without anesthesia, z 5, 6 Other studies have reported a fit between LR and informational coping style, z, a In other words, enhanced coping in stressful situations was found for two-way interactions between informational-seeking style and available behavioral resources. A review of the literature in the area of LR suggests that prior experience and training with success and failure might immunize a subject against learned helplessness. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between LR and the coping behavior of dental students with the crying child. Thirty-nine senior dental students from the Hebrew University -Hadassah Faculty of Dental Medicine, who had a modicum of clinical dental experience with toddlers and young children, served as subjects. Participation was voluntary and confidential. Subjects ranged in age from 22 to 30 years and approximately two-thirds were males.