Dental hygiene in Slovakia.

This article reports on the development of the dental hygiene profession in Slovakia from a global perspective. The aim is to inform about current developments and to examine, how access to qualified dental hygiene care might be improved and how professional challenges might be met. For an international study on dental hygiene, secondary source data were obtained from members of the House of Delegates of the International Federation of Dental Hygienists (IFDH) or by fax and e-mail from experts involved in the national professional and educational organization of dental hygiene in non-IFDH member countries, such as Slovakia. Responses were followed-up by interviews, e-mail correspondence, visits to international universities, and a review of supporting studies and reference literature. Results show that the introduction of dental hygiene in Slovakia in 1992 was inspired by the delivery of preventive care in Switzerland. Initiating local dentists and dental hygienists strive to attain a high educational level, equitable to that of countries in which dental hygiene has an established tradition of high quality care. Low access to qualified dental hygiene care may be a result of insufficient funding for preventive services, social and cultural lack of awareness of the benefits of preventive care, and of limitations inherent in the legal constraints preventing unsupervised dental hygiene practice. These may be a result of gender politics affecting a female-dominated profession and of a perception that dental hygiene is auxiliary to dental care. International comparison show that of all Eastern European countries, the dental hygiene profession appears most advanced in Slovakia. This is expressed in high evidence-based academic goals, in extensive work with international consultants from the Netherlands and Switzerland, in annual congresses of high professional quality, and in the establishment of a profession, which has not been introduced in all Western EU countries.