Flynn Priscilla, Sarkarati Nassim
Dr. Flynn is Assistant Professor, Primary Dental Care, University of Minnesota Twin Cities; and Ms. Sarkarati is a Master of Public Health Student, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
J Dent Educ. 2018 Feb;82(2):103-111. doi: 10.21815/JDE.018.014.
Most dental hygiene educational programs include cultural competence education, but may not evaluate student outcomes. The aim of this study was to design and implement a mixed-methods evaluation to measure dental hygiene students' progression toward cultural competence. Two cohorts consisting of consecutive classes in one U.S. dental hygiene program participated in the study. A total of 47 dental hygiene students (100% response rate) completed self-assessments to measure their attitudes and knowledge at three time points between 2014 and 2016. Mean scores were calculated for three domains: Physical Environment, Communication, and Values. Qualitative analysis of the students' cultural diversity papers was also conducted to further evaluate students' knowledge and skills. Bennett's five-level conceptual framework was used to code phrases or sentences to place students in the general categories of ethnocentric or ethno-relative. The quantitative and qualitative results yielded different outcomes for Cohort 1, but not for Cohort 2. The Cohort 1 students assessed themselves statistically significantly lower over time in one of the three measured domains. However, the Cohort 2 students assessed themselves as statistically significantly more culturally competent in all three domains. Qualitative results placed 72% of Cohort 1 students and 83% of Cohort 2 students in the more desirable ethno-relative category. Since quantitative methods consisting of student self-assessments may not adequately measure students' cultural competence, adding qualitative methods to measure skills specific to patient care in this study added a robust dimension to evaluating this complex dental hygiene student competence.
大多数口腔卫生教育项目都包含文化能力教育，但可能并未对学生的学习成果进行评估。本研究的目的是设计并实施一项混合方法评估，以衡量口腔卫生专业学生在文化能力方面的进步。美国一个口腔卫生项目中连续两个班级的学生参与了该研究。共有47名口腔卫生专业学生（回复率100%）在2014年至2016年期间的三个时间点完成了自我评估，以衡量他们的态度和知识。计算了三个领域的平均得分：物理环境、沟通和价值观。还对学生关于文化多样性的论文进行了定性分析，以进一步评估学生的知识和技能。使用贝内特的五级概念框架对短语或句子进行编码，将学生归类为种族中心主义或种族相对主义的一般类别。定量和定性结果在第1组产生了不同的结果，但在第2组没有。第1组学生在三个测量领域之一中随着时间的推移自我评估得分在统计学上显著降低。然而，第2组学生在所有三个领域中自我评估在文化能力方面在统计学上显著更高。定性结果将72%的第1组学生和83%的第2组学生归为更理想的种族相对类别。由于由学生自我评估组成的定量方法可能无法充分衡量学生的文化能力，在本研究中增加定性方法来衡量特定于患者护理的技能，为评估这种复杂的口腔卫生专业学生能力增加了一个有力的维度。
