• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.6558-6566
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to examine the constituents of vocational competency affecting the professionalism of dental hygienists. The subjects in this study were 230 dental hygienists who worked in university hospitals, dental hospitals, dental clinics and public dental clinics. A survey was conducted from December, 2013, to February, 2014. To assess their vocational competency and professionalism by general characteristics, one-way ANOVA and t-test were utilized, and the level of significance was set at p<0.05. To determine what elements of vocational competency affected their professionalism, multiple regression analysis was made, and standardized regression coefficients were calculated to represent the influence of the elements. As a result, it's found that the professionalism of the dental hygienists were under the influence of their self-development skills, organizational understanding and mathematical ability. To foster self-development skills, discussion method should be utilized, and team teaching should be used to improve organizational understanding. Besides, internship and on-the-job training should be managed in a more systematic way.