Factors Related to the Implementation of Dental Health Promotion in Primary Schools Students of Dental Assistants in Health Region 6

Abstract

The objectives of this survey research was: (1) to identify personal characteristics, work empowerment, and support from hospital network, (2) to study dental health promotion implementation in primary schools students, (3) to study relationship between personal characteristics, work empowerment, support from hospital network, and dental health promotion implementation in primary schools students of dental assistants; and (4) to find out problems, obstacles and suggestions regarding on  dental health promotion implementation in primary schools students in health Region 6. The study population were 334 Dental Assistants who working in health Region 6, 200 sample were stratified random sampling by proportion of dental assistants in each provinces. The structured questionnaire was used for data collection with reliability of 0.97.  Statistic used for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation and chi-square test. The resulted revealed that: (1) personal characteristics of  dental assistants were mostly female with average age 30.97 years, finished a bachelor’s degree level, most of position were civil servants, 40.0% of them were  trained in 1 year, received work empowerment and support from hospital network  at the moderate levels, (2) the dental health promotion implementation in primary schools students was at a high level, (3) factors related to the dental health promotion implementation in primary schools of dental assistants with statistic significant  were work empowerment (p<0.001) and support from hospital network(p=0.003); and (4) problems and obstacles of  dental health promotion implementation in primary schools in health region 6 was repeated data collection, no standard of data collecting system, and  not enough dental assistants, their suggestions were work empowerment by director of hospital health promotion , support from hospital network continuously for better performance, supporting standard program for data collection and plan budget allocation of dental assistants.