Didactic and clinical nutrition content in dental hygiene programs: Directors’ perspective

Concern over inadequacy and implementation processes of nutritional content in dental hygiene education curriculum policy at both a didactic level and clinical level exists. The professional education and development section of the National Dental Hygiene Research Agenda that involves the evaluation of education curricula policy and methods to prepare students to meet community oral health needs could include nutrition knowledge. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine dental hygiene education programs extent and practices of didactic and clinical nutrition curriculum content policy. A qualitative descriptive research design was utilized, and dental hygiene education program directors were recruited through purposive sampling. Interviews were transcribed directly following each interview and data was analyzed simultaneously. The thematic analysis process was a hybrid approach incorporating both the data-driven inductive approach and a template of codes deductive approach. These codes merged into themes such as, the value of nutrition services in a DHEP, the critical roles of power in an institution of education, the capacity building expectations of DHEP clinical and didactic nutrition content, and nutrition curriculum distribution concerns in a DHEP. The last stage of coding and analysis connected the experiences of participants through the lens of Kotter (1996) and Bridges’ (1996) organizational change models. One of the most significant findings of this study was the directors’ intentions with nutrition content and the overwhelming agreeance amongst directors for a future nutrition model standard to guide curriculum content implementation in a uniform manner. The findings of this study revealed power struggles in the directors’ role with policy implications in the implementation of adequate DHEP didactic and clinical nutrition curriculum content. The lack of power as the educational leader of a DHEP in the form of decreased autonomy due to policy implications from the state, institution, and CODA filtered across all interviews. The findings further noted the capacity building expectations needed among DHEPs in areas of faculty and student calibration to create uniformity and establish baselines, as well as creating programs to calibrate consistently. The generalized DHEP director challenges were not astounding as barriers regarding credit limits, program length, and curriculum overload were faced by most participants. To further substantiate these findings from the directors’ perspectives more research must be conducted on a larger scale throughout the U.S. in DHEPs.

Embargo status: Restricted until 01/2023. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.