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영어

The purpose of this study was to examine the awareness of dental hygienists about the usefulness of dental hygiene curriculums in the workplace in an effort to provide some information on the development of dental hygiene curriculums and the improvement of the state qualification examination system. The subjects in this study were 210 dental hygienists who worked in dental hospitals, dental clinics, university hospitals and general hospitals in and around Seoul. A statistical package SPSS 18.0 was employed to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study were as follows: 1. The majority of the respondents(74.8%) replied that the clinical duties of dental hygienists were reflected to some extent in the dental hygiene curriculums which they learned, but 80.0 percent answered that the curriculums weren't good enough to meet the actual requirements of the workplace. As for the reason, they cited lack of newest knowledge or poor skills(26.2%) and poor practicum skills(23.3%) as the reason. 2. Concerning the usefulness of dental hygiene courses, Clinical Dental Hygiene(4.63) was considered most useful, followed by Clinical Practice of Dental Hygiene(4.59) and Clinical Dental Hygiene(4.33). Society of Dental Hygiene(3.20) was regarded as least useful, followed by Basic Job Skill(3.55) and Basic Dental Hygiene(3.62). 3. In relation to opinions on the usefulness of the courses by general characteristics, there were statistically significant differences in the usefulness of Basic Dental Hygiene(p<.003) and Educational Dental Hygiene(p<.002) according to age, and statistically significant differences were found in the usefulness of Basic Dental Hygiene(p<.017) according to the total length of service. And there were statistically significant differences in the usefulness of Basic Dental Hygiene(p<.001), Clinical Dental Hygiene(p<.012) and Society of Dental Hygiene(p<.001) according to the type of workplace. Given the findings of the study, dental hygienist will be able to boost their own job performance as full-fledged experts if a job-based standardized, integrated curriculum is developed by unifying the titles of dental hygiene courses and if necessary textbooks are developed according to the curriculum.