Effects of Critical Thinking Disposition and Empathy on Cultural Competency in Dental Hygiene Students

This study investigated the effects of critical thinking and empathy on the cultural competence of dental hygienists and students. A total of 529 dental hygiene students were randomly sampled and included as subjects. PASW Statistics for Windows ver. 18.0 was used to obtain the following results. Among the critical thinking sub-domains, cognitive integration was the highest and the lowest. Empathic ability had the highest acceptance factor among the sub-domains. Cultural competence was the highest among the sub-domains, while cultural knowledge was the lowest. According to their general characteristics, subject age, grade, religion, and economic level influenced the cultural capacity. Cultural awareness and sensitivity were high when there were foreign visiting experiences. Cultural awareness, sensitivity, skills, and knowledge were high when subjects had experienced multicultural education (p<0.05). Cultural awareness, sensitivity, skill, experience, and knowledge were correlated with critical thinking and cultural competence, among which cultural sensitivity showed the highest correlation (p<0.001). There was a correlation between cultural awareness and sensitivity, skill, and experience among the empathy and cultural competency sub-domains (p<0.001). The factors influencing cultural awareness included intellectual integration, openness, prudence, and perspective-taking (p<0.001). The factors influencing cultural sensitivity included intellectual integration, openness, and empathic concern (p<0.001). The factors influencing cultural skill included intellectual integration, creativity, and conductivity (p<0.001). The factors influencing cultural experience included prudence, objectivity, perspective-taking, and personal distress (p<0.001). Finally, the factors influencing cultural knowledge included creativity and conductivity (p<0.001). The results indicate that dental hygiene students should be equipped with cultural competence to enhance critical thinking and empathy required by the modern society and optimized dental hygiene courses should be provided for multicultural subjects.