Manual dexterity as a predictor of quality of care among dental practitioners.

This study explores the relationship between time to complete a manual dexterity exercise and quality of restorative dentistry. Ninety-seven general practitioners volunteered to take part in the study. An average of 14 patients per office were recalled and an average of five recent restorations per patient were examined clinically by trained peer reviewers. Subsequently, 74 of the 97 dentists participated in a session in which the O'Connor Tweezer Dexterity test was administered. Pearson correlations between speed on the test of tweezer dexterity and quality measures indicated that, on the average, those practitioners who took longer to complete the tweezer test achieved significantly higher scores on restorative quality.