한국 치위생학 교육 평가인증제도의 필요성

Abstract

The increasing cross-border mobility of dental school or dental hygiene students, educators, practitioners, programs and providers takes challenges for existing national quality assurance and accreditation frameworks and bodies, as well as for the systems for recognizing foreign qualifications. The new dental hygiene accreditation system was introduced to encourage the improvement of dental hygiene programs, to ensure the quality of education and, most of all, to establish an internationally compatible system of evaluation and accreditation. The accreditation procedure takes 1 year to complete. The result of the accreditation is released after evaluation via self-study report, site visit, preliminary draft report, responses from the institution and the results from the conciliation and review committees. The result from the accreditation procedur e is either ‘accreditation’ or ‘no accreditation’. Accredited schools receive one of several statuses following the evaluation. These are next general review, interim report and interim visit or su spension. Dental healthcare quality is not improved instantaneously, but instead gradually through continuous communication within the dental field. For this accreditation system to be successful, the following are essential: the accreditation agency should adop t hygiene education accreditation; it needs to become financially independent and managed efficiently; the autonomy and regulations surrounding the system need to be balanced; the professionalism of the system is ensured; and the dental field which includes not only dental program, but also hygiene program, needs to play an active role in the operation of the system.