Research Article
Attitudes towards Treating Individuals with Disabilities: A Survey of Dental Hygiene Students and Dental Hygiene Faculty
Susan S Parker RDH. MEd. MBA1* and Jennifer K Hew RDH. MSHCM. FADPD2
1Associate Professor, Department of Comprehensive Dentistry at Louisiana Health Sciences Center’s School of Dentistry, USA
2Assistant Professor, Department of Comprehensive Dentistry at Louisiana Health Sciences Center’s School of Dentistry, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Susan Parker
Associate Professor
LSU School of Dentistry
New Orleans, LA, 70119, USA
Tel: 504-941-8382
Fax: 504-941-8218
E-mail: spark2@lsuhsc.edu
Received Date: June 07, 2013; Accepted Date: July 31, 2013; Published Date: August 03, 2013
Citation: Parker SS, Hew JKL (2013) Attitudes towards Treating Individuals with Disabilities: A Survey of Dental Hygiene Students and Dental Hygiene Faculty. J Oral Hyg Health 1:109. doi: 10.4172/2332-0702.1000109
Copyright: © 2013 Parker SS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The transactual research study’s purpose is to assess the attitudes of student dental hygienists and their faculty utilizing the Lee and Solis “Dental Students’ Attitudes towards the Handicapped Scale” (DSATHS), as described in Stoltenberg and Walker. An email was sent to student dental hygienists and their faculty (who are registered dental hygienists) at four Louisiana dental hygiene programs using Survey Monkey. The hygiene chair had been contacted prior to sending out the survey questions for consensual agreement to be contacted. A total of 65 respondents of the 158 that were mailed completed and sent the survey back. Data was categorized by frequency distributions. Student data showed positive feelings towards treating people with disabilities. Faculty showed similar positive responses to this survey. The authors work in Special Olympics-Special Smiles programs and they were very happy with the positive information provided by this survey.
