ADHP and Access to Dental Care:The Dental Hygiene Students' Perspective

Abstract

One of the oral health goals of Healthy People 2010 is to improve access to services. The Surgeon General's Report on Oral Health (May 2000) charge to dental professionals is to “continue to seek solutions to questions of access and barriers to care.” To that end, the Advanced Dental Hygiene Practitioner (ADHP) was proposed by the American Dental Hygienists' Association (ADHA) to provide diagnostic, therapeutic, preventive, and restorative services to the population that is not presently served. This study was developed to ascertain hygiene students' perceptions of the need for the ADHP. To determine the senior dental hygiene students' perception of the need for the ADHP, a survey was developed and administered at the end of the Community Health course spring semester 2005(n=27; 100% response rate). A field test of the survey was conducted by the faculty and their suggestions were incorporated into the survey. The researchers developed 10 quantitative questions (5-point Likert-type scale) and qualitative open-ended questions to help with interpretation of the quantitative results (“please explain your response”). The survey was downloaded on the course's Blackboard site in the Assessment section. The mean for each question was automatically calculated by Blackboard. The results indicate that senior hygiene students perceive, that to address the disparity of access to dental care, there is an “extreme demand” (47%) for an ADHP. Likewise, 47% of the students felt there was an “average need” for the ADHP. Only 5% of the students felt there was “no need” for an ADHP.

The results of this study indicate that senior dental hygiene students are in agreement with ADHA, and recently published reports, which indicate that access to dental care can be enhanced with the development of the ADHP. Future research is necessary to determine the number of dental hygiene students and practitioners who are interested in pursuing this career option, with the intent to address the disparity of access to dental care by the “un-served public.”