Abuzar Menaka A, Owen Julie
Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne , Australia.
J Public Health Res. 2016 Apr 26;5(1):668. doi: 10.4081/jphr.2016.668.
Indigenous people worldwide suffer from poor oral health as compared to non-Indigenous citizens. One of the approaches to bring about improvement in Indigenous oral health is to enhance the service provision by implementing oral health outplacement programmes. A case study of such a programme for dental students in Australia reports how an educational institution can successfully engage with an Indigenous oral health service to provide learning experiences to the students as well as deliver much needed services to the community.
The assessment of this ongoing outplacement programme over the period of 2008-14, based on students' feedback, highlights some of the key beneficial outcomes. Students agreed that the Indigenous outplacement programme improved their understanding of Indigenous issues (mean ± SD: 4.10±0.8; 5 refers to strongly agree on 5-point scale) and increased the possibility that they will practise in Indigenous health (3.66±1.0). They were pleased with the assistance received by clinical supervisors and clinic staff at the Indigenous dental clinic (4.28±0.8).
This programme has demonstrated that structured student outplacements are valuable in building relations across cultures especially with Indigenous communities. It has also shown that university engagement with the public health sector can be beneficial to both institutions. Significance for public healthAn oral health outreach programme is one of the suggested approaches to effectively address the endemic issues of poor oral health among Indigenous people around the world. An Indigenous dental clinical outplacement in Australia provides an example of beneficial outcomes of such an approach. It provides dental students with an opportunity to experience the health issues related to Australian Indigenous communities and prepare future graduates to work comfortably in the public health care system. Indigenous people also develop trust and feel comfortable in receiving oral health care services from non-indigenous clinicians.
与非原住民公民相比，世界各地的原住民口腔健康状况较差。改善原住民口腔健康的方法之一是通过实施口腔健康外派项目来加强服务提供。一项针对澳大利亚牙科学生此类项目的案例研究报告了一个教育机构如何成功地与原住民口腔健康服务机构合作，为学生提供学习体验，并为社区提供急需的服务。
基于学生反馈对2008 - 2014年期间这个正在进行的外派项目进行评估，突出了一些关键的有益成果。学生们一致认为，原住民外派项目增进了他们对原住民问题的理解（均值±标准差：4.10±0.8；5表示在5分制中强烈同意），并增加了他们在原住民健康领域执业的可能性（3.66±1.0）。他们对在原住民牙科诊所得到临床督导和诊所工作人员的帮助感到满意（4.28±0.8）。
该项目表明，有组织的学生外派对于建立跨文化关系尤其是与原住民社区的关系很有价值。它还表明，大学与公共卫生部门的合作对双方机构都有益。对公共卫生的意义
口腔健康外展项目是有效解决全球原住民口腔健康不佳这一地方性问题的建议方法之一。澳大利亚的一个原住民牙科临床外派项目提供了这种方法取得有益成果的一个例子。它为牙科学生提供了一个机会，让他们体验与澳大利亚原住民社区相关的健康问题，并使未来的毕业生能够在公共医疗保健系统中舒适地工作。原住民也建立了信任，并且在接受非原住民临床医生的口腔保健服务时感到安心。
