The Effect of Self-Expression on Stress with Clinical Dental Practice among Students in the Department of Dental Hygiene

치위생과 학생의 자기표현이 임상실습 스트레스에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the self-expression level of dental hygiene students related to communicative competence and their stress during clinical practice and what affected their stress. The subjects in this study were 125 dental hygiene students in W college, on whom a survey was conducted from September 18 through 30, 2006. After the collected data were analyzed with SPSS WIN 10.0 program, the following findings were acquired: 1. When a factor analysis was made to evaluate the self-expression of the students, there appeared three different categories of self-expression: voice/content, facial expression/attitude and sentiment. The three made a 58.1% prediction of their self-expression. As for overall reliability, they turned out highly reliable(Cronbach'a = .881). 2. The dental hygiene students got a mean of 3.58 out of possible five points in self-expression, which indicated that they expressed themselves relatively well. Concerning connections between their general characteristics and self-expression level, those who were inactive during clinical practice got a mean of 3.28, whereas the others who were active got a mean of 3.85. It implied that those who took a more active attitude to clinical practice expressed themselves better(p < .01). The person with whom they found it hard to get along made a statistically significant difference to their self-expression(p < .05). The students who didn't fare well with dental hygienists got the best score(3.70). The second best group(3.53) didn't get along with dentists, followed by assistant nurses(3.46) and patients/caregivers(3.31). As for the impact of the field of dream job, the students who hoped to work or study overseas(4.21) excelled in self-expression those who wanted to be hired in a general hospital, to go onto a school of higher grade and to work in a public dental clinic(p < .05). Among the general characteristics, satisfaction level with major, health status and motivation of choosing dental hygiene made no statistically significant differences to their self-expression. 3. Regarding relations between self-expression level and stress about clinical practice, those who didn't express themselves properly in terms of sentiment scored higher in stress level(3.65). Their stress was statistically significantly different according to self-expression level (p < .05). 4. As for the influence of self-expression and general characteristics on stress with clinical practice, sentiment was selected from among the self-expression categories as a decisive factor to affect stress. Their stress varied statistically significantly with that(p < .05). In contrast, their demographic variables made no statistically significant difference to that, which made a 79.2% prediction of it.