The Comparative Opinion of Dentists Working in the Private and Public on Advertising Ban in Healthcare Services

Background: Medical institutions, just like other institutions, have promotion issues on marketing the services they produce in the ever increasing competition. Because the effect of promotion methods change from consumer to consumer and according to environmental conditions, the promotion concepts used by institutions providing healthcare services may demonstrate a different content.

Aim: In this research, it is aimed to reveal the opinions of dentists working in private and public sectors on the advertisement bans in the healthcare sector. In addition to this, the opinions of dentists working in the private and public sectors on advertisement bans will be analyzed in terms of their demographic characteristics and their positive and negative opinions on advertisement bans.

Methods: Literature has been scanned and a questionnaire consisting of two sections has been developed for the research in order to determine the opinions of dentists working in the private and public sectors on advertisement bans in the healthcare sector. The questionnaire has been conducted to 120 dentists, which 60 of the them working in the private sector and the other 60 working in the public sector, in Ankara. The analysis of the data obtained in the research has been evaluated with a statistical package program. In the research, ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), T-Test and LCD (Fisher's Least Significant Difference) tests have been conducted. In addition to this, frequency tables and descriptive statistics have also been used.

Results: According to the five hypotheses put forward in the study, four of these hypotheses were accepted, one hypothesis was refused. According to this, it has been determined that there is a statistically significant difference between the gender, level of education, level of income and whether these participant dentists work in the private or public sectors and their opinions on advertisement freedom. It has also been determined that this difference doesn’t exist in terms of age groups.

Conclusion: While it has been determined that dentists working in the private sector agree more with the statements related to introductory advertisements, informative advertisements and regulatory advertisements, the same group of dentists have agreed less with statements related to negative effects of advertisements and influence strength of advertisements.