Improvement of Oral Environment Indices of Oral Preventive Care Program, and Change in Oral Health-related Behaviors based on Dental Hygiene Process

Abstract

This study aims to ensure the autonomy of dental hygienists through an oral preventive care program based on the dental hygiene process, and to provide basic data to support systematic and professional oral care. It was intended to determine changes in patients’ oral-related knowledge, awareness, practice, OHB and other various oral hygiene care indices through the dental hygiene process. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 21.0), and statistical significance level was set at p<0.05. Frequency analysis was performed for general characteristics and two-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed to compare changes in the oral health care indices of the dental hygiene process. In addition, paired t-test was performed to compare differences in oral health knowledge, awareness, practice and OHB, and bivariate correlation analysis was performed to determine correlations between them. In the results of this study, it was found that there were significant decreases in S-0HI, PSR Score and BOP, O’ Leary through the dental hygiene process, showing that the oral preventive care program was effective (p<.001). Oral health knowledge, awareness, practice and OHB were also found to be significantly increased, revealing that there were positive changes (p<.001). It is expected that the clinical application of this dental hygiene program would be established as an effective manual to improve the oral environment.