INVESTIGATION OF QUALITY IMPROVEMENT STRATEGIES WITHIN EGYPTIAN DENTAL CLINICS

Abstract

There is a demand to evaluate the quality of dental clinics for improving the healthcare of dentistry sector. The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) presented the quality factors in a dental career which are technical skills, ethics, expertise and cost in the light of the international criterions of dental instruments. There is the low possibility that is still untapped in the aspect of the quality program for dental clinics because of lack of awareness, unapplied of total quality management (TQM) principles and fabrication of a mismatch between the patient needs and the services provided. Therefore, this study described a framework of TQM application for Egyptian dental clinics in the view of clinical engineer that based on random questionnaires from doctors, patients and quality control supervisors at different medical entities under study. All blinding data that obtained from statistical measurements are analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Science program (SPSS) to provide some recommendations that related to risk management, infection control and thus reduce the spread of diseases in the clinics. The findings of this study elucidated the methodology of clinical engineering in development the quality program among dental clinics through the design of clinic, equipment maintenance and dissemination of quality standard guidelines. This work is considered as the first survey of dental clinics quality in Egypt that will represent a preliminary step in the application of quality standards to promote the level of patient safety.