Abstract
Objectives: This study was aimed for elucidating conditions and performance of public health dentists for public oral health activities to deal with the upcoming shortage of public health dentists Methods: A survey was performed involving 750 public health dentists worked for more than one year and 212 responses were collected. Conditions and performances for oral health activities were compared according to 2 regions and 3 types of the institution by t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), chi-squared test, and Fisher's exact test, as appropriate using SPSS statistical package. A significance level of 0.05 was applied. Results: Public health dentists worked for 41 hours a week and treated around 7 outpatients a day. Frequencies of several oral health activities were significantly associated with types of health care institutions, while regions were not. Frequent oral health activities ranked were sealant (88.2%), simple service such as extraction (65.6%), and simple periodontal treatment such as scaling (60.8%). Water flouridation (3.3%) and planning health activities (12.3%) were infrequently executed. Conclusion: Public health dentist system was need to be reformed for effective public health activities. Public health dentists working at health center (HC) was suggested to concentrate on oral health activities, not treatment for outpatients, while branch of HC mainly respond to need of dental treatment.