주성분 분석을 활용한 우리나라 치과위생사 인력의 수급 지수 제안

Abstract

An imbalance in Korea between the supply and demand for auxiliary dental personnel has led to a growing shortage of dental hygienists in clinics. Despite the annual graduation of approximately 5,000 dental hygienists, the number of registered dental hygienists stands at 83,817 as of 2019, and the number of active practitioners account for only half of this total. This study aimed to address issues related to the supply and demand of dental hygienists and develop a regional dental hygienist supply-and-demand index. The research data included the number of dental clinics, graduates from dental hygiene departments, and job openings for dental hygienists on employment websites. Unsupervised machine learning-based principal component analysis, a statistical technique that synthesizes the essence of features from correlated factors, was used for data analysis. The results of developing a dental hygienist supply-and-demand index using principal component analysis revealed a low correlation of the index with the number of graduates from dental hygiene departments, and the highest correlation with the number of dental clinics. The data used and delivered in this study are expected to support the accumulation of knowledge for and the future development of a more accurate index.