Research

A comparative study of the perceptions of dental hygienists and dentists of nonsurgical periodontal therapy

Sang Eun  Moon1   Sun Hwa  Hong 2,*    Yun Jeong  Kim1   Seon Young Kim1    Hye Eun   Cho1   HyunJ oo Kang1    Hye Won  Cheon 3    Kyung Seon  Kim4   Sun Ok  Jang5    Hye Young  Oh 6   So Jung  Mun 7   

Department of Dental Hygiene, Kwangju Women's University
1Department of Dental Hygiene, Chunmam Techno University
2Department of Dental Hygiene, Howon University
3Department of Dental Hygiene, Jeonju Kijeon College
4Department of Dental Hygiene, Hallym Polytechnic University
5Department of Dental Hygiene, Suwon Science College
6Department of Dental Hygiene, Yonsei University

Abstract

This study applied the co-orientation model to investigate the degree to which dental hygienists and dentists recognize the efficiency of dental hygienists’ non-surgical periodontal therapy work; the basic data can be provided as a systematic arrangement that can be applied and extended to dental clinics to raise mutual understanding. Independent sample t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and paired t-tests were conducted with a total of 888 subjects (530 dental hygienists and 358 dentists) using SPSS Statistics 22.0. The analysis showed that, dental hygienists had higher recognition of the efficiency of their work (p<0.001) than dentists, with respect to all items(p>0.05). With respect to subjective agreement, dental hygienists estimated lower recognition among dentists than other dental hygienists and dentists estimated higher recognition among dentists than dental hygienists. With respect to accuracy, dentists’ estimation was lower than the actual recognition among dental hygienists and dental hygienists’ estimation was higher than the actual recognition among dentists in all cases except the efficiency of dental hygienists’ patient education work and constant learning. There was wide gap between dental hygienists and dentists in recognition of the efficiency of dental hygienists’ non-surgical periodontal therapy work. Actions must be taken to raise mutual understanding between dental hygienists and dentists regarding dental hygienists’ non-surgical periodontal therapy work, to spread this recognition throughout the dental industry, and to implement systematic support at dental clinics.

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