The roles of other dental personnel in the patient care provided by dental hygienists in traditional and nontraditional settings.

The information presented in this paper was obtained as part of an ongoing longitudinal study of 1982 dental hygiene graduates. This portion of the study was contracted by the American Dental Hygienists' Association and investigated the roles of personnel other than the dental hygienist in dental hygiene patient care by collecting data on (1) the numbers of personnel by personnel category, (2) the activities that other personnel provide to assist the hygienist in providing care, (3) the frequency at which the dentist evaluates the hygienist's work and (4) the frequency at which the dentist examines the hygienist's patients. In September 1986, mail questionnaires were sent to a cohort of 1,008 dental hygienists who graduated in 1982. Responses were received from 766 subjects--a 76% response rate overall and 77% response rate from subjects with valid addresses. Data were analyzed for clinical dental hygienists working in traditional and nontraditional settings. The median numbers of personnel were similar in both traditional and nontraditional settings; however, the means and standard deviations were larger for nontraditional settings. The most common forms of assistance provided by other personnel were billing and scheduling patients; a greater percentage of hygienists in traditional settings had this type of help. Hygienists were more likely to report that dentists examined their patients rather than evaluated the hygienists' work, and hygienists in nontraditional settings reported less dentist involvement with dental hygiene patient care than did hygienists in traditional settings.