• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.547-553
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• 2015

Objectives: In this comparative analytic study the standard competency of American Dental Hygienists proposed by the America Dental Education Association was examined and compared with the competency of American school of entry-level to identify the competence required by domestic dental hygienists. Methods: Based on the standard competency presented by the America Dental Education Association the 109 schools which provide respective dental hygiene competency among 336 universities and colleges belonging to the entry-level were compared with each other, and the collected data were processed by SPSS 21.0. Results: The descriptive statistics upon overall competence were prepared and the results of survey revealed the highest average score of 7.53 for the Core competency. It was identified that there were statistically significant difference between two groups of the above(the top 25%) and below the average level(the 25% from the bottom) in all the competency. The competency of participation in local community and patients' care were appeared as significant variables affecting the core competency of dental hygienists with the 76.4% of explanatory power, and the model reveals the statistically significant results(p<0.001). Conclusions: Based on these results it was identified that the ethical, communication skill, self-development efforts, and capability of critical thinking and judgment were necessary competency for the dental hygienists. Further efforts to integrate and standardize the competency of domestic dental hygienists are thus needed and based on these integrated and standardized competencies the integrated curricula to cultivate domestic dental hygienists should be developed.