The Experience of Medical Conflict and the Educational Needs of Dental Hygienists

The study was conducted to provide data for the development of effective medical conflict prevention programs for dental hygiene by analyzing the dental experience conflicts. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted targeting dental hygienists who were performing dental assistance at university hospital, dental hospital and dental clinic in Busan and Gyeongnam regions from April 1 to 30, 2014. Collected questionnaires of 212 dental hygienists were then analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 20.0 program. A total of 59.4% had experienced complaints, discontents and medical disputes and 24% of these had experienced a legal trouble developed from such and 95.3% were anxious and doubtful about a possible future medical dispute to some degree. Patient complaints, complaints of non-medical issues raised by 24.3% was the most common, notices, maps and descriptions in relation to the issues raised by 14.4%, is related to the impression issue was raised in the order of 13.5%. Occurrence of disputes did not show a significant difference by place of work, however, a possibility of development of dispute into a legal proceeding showed a significant difference depending on service career and it was investigated that the experienced group feels more pressures with regard to a medical dispute according to their experience of such. All respondents said that education on a prevention and countermeasures of medical disputes is necessary. Understanding of dental hygienists on medical related laws regarding the scope of duty is required to be enhanced and, in order to do so, opportunities to receive an education with regard to a prevention and countermeasures of medical disputes are to be expanded.