2017 Volume 51 Issue 1 Pages 9-16
The socioeconomic situation in Japan is changing drastically, resulting in the need for a variety of dental interventions. Dental healthcare providers therefore need to offer effi cient treatments to prevent dental diseases and take the initiative on providing guidance for oral health. Community dentistry which is the only academic discipline in dentistry to expertly address prevention and health promotion will play a central role in this, and den tal hygienists will play an important role. In the present study, we conducted a questionnairebased survey with intraoral exami nations of firstto thirdyear dental hygiene students enrolled at Osaka Dental University School of Dental Hygienists. The changes in their knowledge and interpretation of dental and oral health after taking a course on oral hygiene were aggregated and analyzed by text mining. After aggregating and analyzing responses to the questionnaire, we found that most students who wanted to become dental hygienists had visited dental clinics 1 to 5 times during their elementary school days, and that most of them answered that they currently had no dental caries. Furthermore, more than 90% of the students reported that they saw themselves working as dental hygienists in 10 years, indicating a strong awareness and attitude that they would continue their profession in the future. In our comparison of stu dents before and after taking a course on oral hygiene, most firstyear students gave an swers closer to the knowledge and interpretation of the general population, while most secondyear students gave interpretations based on professional knowledge and think ing, such as methods of preventing dental diseases learned from their courses. Third year students, however, had a tendency to interpret questions with a focus on dentistry,because their view of prevention and health promotion had been influenced by other clinical courses. Differences in knowledge and interpretation of the field of oral hygiene were dependent on the student's academic year. This suggests that, in order to preserve the concept of oral hygiene required by dental hygienists up into the third academic year, we need to investigate the provision of courses on oral hygiene in a new curriculum that is not bound by the concept of sepa rate curricula in each academic year with traditional fixed semesters. This could be achieved by introducing iterative learning of topics addressed in the first year into the second and third years, or by crossover courses of clinical and basic subjects. (J Osaka Dent Univ 2017 ;51 : 916)
