The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of predisposing, enabling, need factors and oral health care factors to the dental utilization in 4,521 senior citizens based on the 5th National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data. As for the relationship of predisposing, enabling and need factors to the necessity of denture, higher academic credential and higher income level that were respectively one of predisposing and need factors led to a higher necessity of denture, and the relationship of these factors was statistically significant. As to influential factors for their dental utilization in Model 1, there were significant differences according to gender, marital status and whether to subscribe to private health insurance or not. In Model 2, the need factors of Model 1 were adjusted. As a result, the respondents who didn't receive any unsatisfactory dental treatment made 1.35-fold more dental utilization, and the respondents who complained about mastication difficulty made 1.34-fold more dental utilization. There were significant differences according to gender, age, marital status, academic credential, whether to subscribe to private health insurance, unsatisfactory dental treatment experience and mastication difficulty. Age, unsatisfactory dental treatment experience and whether to complain about mastication difficulty or not made statistically significant differences to the dental utilization in Model 3 that involved oral health status. The above-mentioned findings illustrated that the predisposing factors, the enabling factors and the need factors exerted an influence on the elderly dental utilization. As there are a variety of factors to affect elderly dental utilization, its required to make an effort to boost the accessibility of the elderly to dental service in order to improve their oral health of the elderly.

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Background: Maintaining a skilled workforce by minimizing the turnover of competent dental hygienists is very important for securing dental competitiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to find a predictor of turnover and lower turnover intention. To understand dental hygienist turnover, it is necessary to study the resilience, a positive factor of personal characteristics and job embeddedness that induces residual tissue. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of dental hygienists' job embeddedness and resilience on turnover intention. Methods: A survey was conducted on licensed dental hygienists nationwide, from March 19 to July 19, 2020. T-test and one way ANOVA analysis were performed to compare the job embeddedness, resilience, and turnover intention according to the general characteristics. Pearson's correlation analysis was performed to identify the correlation between job embeddedness, resilience, and turnover intention. Multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the effect on the turnover intention. Results: Job embeddedness was the highest with link and resilience scoring 3.57 and 4.16, respectively. The turnover intention scored 3.53. Among the general characteristics, age, marriage, total dental clinic career, education degree, and position showed statistically significant differences in job embeddedness, resilience, and turnover intention. Suitability, link, and sacrifice of job embeddedness were shown to affect the degree of turnover intention, with an explanatory power of 26.2%. Conclusion: In order to reduce the dental hygienists' turnover intention, job embeddedness and resilience should be increased. Thus, measures should be undertaken for professional and systematic program development and human resources management.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of empathic ability and campus life stress on the stress coping behaviors among 395 dental hygiene students. The analysis was performed using PASW Statistics ver. 18.0, and the following conclusions were obtained. The empathic concern factor was the highest in the subscale of empathic ability (3.60). The interpersonal relationship stress was 1.65 and the task-related stress was 2.72. The stress coping behaviors were the highest among the sub-domains, with 3.69 for wishful thinking. The differences of stress coping behaviors according to general characteristics were as follows. The lower the age and grade, the higher the problem-focused coping; when they were religious there was a high pursuit of seeking social support. When they were satisfied with their economic level, wishful thinking was high. There was a low negative correlation between empathic concern and interpersonal relationship stress in campus life (p＜0.01). There was a positive correlation between personal distress and task-related stress (p＜0.001). The relationship between empathic ability and stress coping behaviors was most associated with personal distress and wishful thinking. Among the sub-domains of stress coping behaviors, factors that have a common impact on personal distress and seeking social support are viewpoint acceptance. Factors supporting emotional focus and wishful thinking were task-related stress. Dental hygiene students are not able to completely eliminate the stress that they are actually under. However, as the research results show, it is necessary to use stress coping techniques to cope effectively with individual tendencies and situations, and to improve the ability to sympathize with another individual.

As the elderly population increases, they are increasingly affected by oral health problems. Therefore, efforts are being made to improve the oral health of older people, alleviate mental discomfort, and reduce unmet dental needs. This study was conducted to confirm the relationship between the National Health Insurance Elderly Denture Coverage and the unmet dental need for the edentulous elderly, as part of the protection policy. We analyzed the 2011 and 2013 Community Health Survey data of the edentulous elderly, aged 75 years or older, before 2012. In order to more precisely confirm the effects of the denture donation policy on unmet dental care, basic life recipients who were subject to the free elderly prosthetic project were excluded from the analysis. The final analysis included 20,400 subjects. According to our investigation of the factors that affect the unmet dental needs of the elderly, the National Health Insurance Elderly Denture Coverage did not affect unmet dental needs. The statistically significant variables that affected the unmet dental needs of the elderly were education and income levels, which are representative socioeconomic status variables. The lower the level of education, the unhealthier the dental care experience, and income levels showed a similar tendency. The elderly who have a low socioeconomic status are more likely to experience unmet dental needs because they lack the knowledge and socioeconomic ability to pay for dental care. Therefore, the policy for health protection of the entire elderly population should be continuously expanded. In addition, the socioeconomically vulnerable groups may have health problems due to the restriction of medical use, which may lead to quality of life deterioration.