Analysis of educational needs for improving the geriatric dental hygiene curriculum

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the educational needs for geriatric dental hygiene and provide basic data for developing standard curricula for geriatric hygiene. Methods: To investigate the educational needs for geriatric dental hygiene, 212 students from dental hygiene departments and 205 dental hygienists engaged in clinical practice were enrolled. Results: Among the educational needs for geriatric dental hygiene, Geriatric oral health issues category was the highest with 4.06 points for students and 4.05 points for dental hygienists. Students who completed a geriatric dental hygiene course had higher scores for the following sub-domains compared to those who did not: need for geriatric dental hygiene-related theoretical education (p=0.002), needs for practice education with elderly people (p=0.001), and confidence in performing oral healthcare for elderly people after graduation (p<0.001). Meanwhile, clinical dental hygienists who not completed geriatric-related courses had higher scores for, need for geriatric dental hygiene-related theoretical education, need for practice education with elderly people, and confidence in performing oral healthcare for elderly people. but, there was no significant difference (p>0.05). Conclusions: The results of this study showed that students and dental hygienists had high educational needs for geriatric dental hygiene. In particular, there was a high demand for education related to Geriatric oral health issues as well as Geriatric dental hygiene care and skills

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