Abstract
Objectives: This study surveyed the application of Comprehensive Dental Hygiene Care (CDHC), based on non-surgical periodontal therapy within the educational curricula of Korean universities and examined whether they recognized the need for CDHC. Methods: This study analyzed data from professors of dental hygiene practicum related subjects in 75 Korean universities. The collected data were analyzed using a Chi-square test, a Mann-Whitney U-test, and a Kruskal Wallis test via SPSS (Ver. 21.0). Results: First, the application scope of CDHC was higher in four-year universities than three-year ones with the scope of several characteristics increasing along with enrollment quota. The application scope of dental hygiene plans and actions increased with the number of patient practices in terms of periodontal evaluations. Second, the needs of the dental hygiene courses were more than 4 points in all characteristics. Although four-year universities exhibited higher points than three-year ones, there was no significant difference found except other test. Finally, all universities based their dental hygiene courses on case histories, oral and maxillofacial information, hard tissue modules, periodontal issues, and other tests, with needs also being high. Meanwhile, the application scope of the dental hygiene course evaluations was lowest in all characteristics. Conclusions: There were no significant differences in dental hygiene curricula among the universities. However, highly qualified and standardized educational courses and lectures should be developed by the Korean evaluation center for dental hygiene curricula using various studies as the basis of theory and practical classes, the total number of terms, number of case studies used, number of students per class, ratio of students to professor, and so on.
