Abstract
The Japan Health Care Dental Association has established a system to certify clinics that meet the requirements of “health care practice” (e.g., setting preventive care as the basis of treatment, sharing information with patients, treating patients as a team, establishing a maintenance system, etc.) as “dental clinics that protect and nurture health” to be conditioned on a questionnaire asking for patients’ ratings of the treatment. The results of this anonymous mail-based questionnaire survey (57 clinics, 8,567 responses) were secondarily used to investigate implementation status of the following examinations: (1) intraoral photography, (2) dental X-ray, (3) caries risk examination, and (4) periodontal tissue examination. For the four tests, (a) the test implementation rate and (b) the comprehension rate of the test results were evaluated, and (c) the comprehension rate of the need for regular maintenance was also investigated. After anonymizing 57 dental clinics, (a), (b), and (c) of each clinic were calculated, and the clinics were plotted against the coordinates of (a) and (b) as well as (b) and (c), and the correlation between (a), (b), and (c) was examined with the distribution of the clinics (correlation coefficient). As a result, no correlation was found between (a) the test implementation rate and (b) the comprehension rate of the test results while a correlation was found between (b) and (c) the comprehension rate of the need for regular maintenance. All of (a), (b) and (c) are medical services carried out by dental hygienists, and the importance of their roles was confirmed.
