The purpose of this study was to examine the necessity of the establishment of more incremental oral health care centers and needs for that as a means to step up the job extension of dental hygienists. It"s basically meant to provide some information on the installation of more incremental oral health care centers. The subjects in this study were 298 dental hygienists in dental hospitals and clinics in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The findings of the study were as follows:
The most common recall cycle for patients who were to receive preventive dental treatment was between three and less than six months, and the preventive job that was most widely conducted in the dental hospitals and clinics was regular recall, followed by individual toothbrushing education, scaling, pit & fissure sealing, partial application of fluorides, individual oral health education, PMTC:EVA tip.
Regarding needs for the introduction of incremental oral health care centers among the dental hygienists, 71.8 percent replied they had an intention to do that. As for the reason, the largest group(47.4%) thought that it would be necessary to expand the preventive duties of dental hygienists, and the second biggest group(33.0%) expected it to expedite the career diversification of dental hygienists in the future.
Therefore the necessity of the establishment of more incremental oral health care centers is justified as a way to accelerate the preventive job expansion of dental hygienists, to ensure the diversity of treatment and to promote the oral health of everybody in the nation as well as local residents.
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