| Summary: | 碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 口腔衛生科學碩士在職專班 === 92 === Preface: Most dental patients do not understand nor pay attention to the conditions of infection control during their visits to dental clinics. However, people have started to notice the importance of dental infection control after being influenced and pressured by the threat and fear of the SARS outbreak throughout all of Taiwan during March of 2003. SARS is transmitted by saliva and inhaled through the respiratory tract. Dentists are very close to their patient’s mouth and respiratory tract during treatment; therefore, it is easy to spread the SARS infection. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate the impact on dental visiting behavior and the attitude toward sterilization and infection control in dental clinics and the recognition of SARS among general population before and after the SARS outbreak.
Study Method and Analysis: The sample size of this study was 22 dental clinics in Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County through randomized sampling. Eight hundreds and ninty questionnaires were sent out to dental patients from ages 20 to 80 years old. Six hundreds and twenty questionnaires were useful among those returned, and the return rate was 69.7% using JMP computer software analysis.
Results: Through chi-square analysis, the results illustrated that there was significant difference in the change of dental visiting behavior (p<0.05). Before the SARS outbreak, 61.1% of patients visited dentists when they felt pain or uncomfortable, whereas after the SARS outbreak, it was 56.1%. Before the SARS outbreak, 9.8% patients visited dentists only when they could not tolerate the pain, whereas after the SARS outbreak, it was 13.9%. The factors involved in choosing a dental clinic were the treatment quality (79.2%), clean and thorough sterilization (70.1%), and service attitude (64.1%); whereas the percentages were 82.7%, 78.2%, and 64.4% respectively after the SARS outbreak. More than 80% of the patients believed that government certification of the clinic’s infection control would be the essential factor in their selecting a dental clinic.
During the process of dental treatment, 82.9% of patients wished that the dentists would explain each infection control procedure to them, mentioning all the equipment being changed (78.2%), the process of whole sterilization and infection control (69.4%), and the treatment chair being cleaned (58.4%). However, percentages of dentists that have explained the above items were 83.1%, 65.3%, 63.1%, and 50.8% respectively. In addition, age, education level, occupation, number of dental visits per year also affected the dental visiting behavior and the attitude toward sterilization and infection control in the dental clinics. Patients of older age, higher education level, or with more than two dental visits a year pay more attention to the condition of sterilization and infection control in the dental clinics. Among the occupations, patients who were in the medical field or were housewives took more notice to infection control, whereas students pay less attention to infection control. In addition, education level, occupation, and income also affected patients’ recognition toward SARS; patients who were highly educated, working in the medical field and earned higher income had higher recognition toward SARS.
Conclusion and Suggestions:
This study found that patients were concerned about the clean and complete sterilization in the dental clinics before the SARS outbreak, but it became more obvious after the outbreak. Although the dentists had satisfied most needs of patients during the treatment, they still had not met the patients’ expectations regarding sterilization and infection control. Dentists need increased communication with the patients regarding these issues. Therefore, if the government certifies the infection control of dental clinics, the patients’ worries and concerns will be satisfied.
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