Abstract
Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine the job awareness of dental hygiene students about a dental hygienist, what duties they wanted to do as dental hygienists, their awareness of college courses related to the job performance of dental hygienists and whether they viewed the courses as what's most widely utilized for the clinical job performance of dental hygienists. It's ultimately meant to help provide good education for dental hygiene students to have the right understanding of dental hygienists and bolster their professionalism. Methods : The subjects in this study were 301 dental hygiene students in four different colleges located in the metropolitan area. A survey was conducted to find out their satisfaction level with the department of dental hygiene, personal characteristics, awareness of college courses and awareness of the duties of dental hygienists. Results : The group of students who deemed the life span of the dental hygienist occupation to be long put more significance on the college courses that should focus on job performance. As for the relationship between their personal characteristics and awareness of the college courses, their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the department and their ideas on the life span of the occupation made significant differences to that. The group of students who considered the life span of the occupation to be longer thought that the college courses would be more linked to the duties of dental hygienists and their job performance and should be given more weight, and there were significant differences among them in their view of the life span of the occupation and awareness of the college courses that should be given more weight(p<.05). Their view of how much the college courses would be linked to the duties of dental hygienists had a statistically significant correlation to that of the college courses that should focus on the clinical job performance of dental hygienists. Conclusions : The above-mentioned findings suggest that as part of the regular curriculum, the kind of education that aims at boosting the professionalism and job performance of dental hygienists as experts should be provided for dental hygiene students to build the right values as professional dental hygienists.
