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ABSTRACT
Background and purpose: Dental hygienists have been targeted for practice expansion to improve public access to oral healthcare, specifically by changing their scopes of practice and healthcare delivery models. Dental hygienists must demonstrate their decision making capacity within existing and new frameworks to support such an expansion. This paper presents the Phase I findings of a mixed methods study. The aim was to explore dental hygiene decision making, identify key influences on decision making and develop a qualitative dental hygiene decision making model based on those influences tested in Phase II. Organizational and feminist theories underpinned the study. Methods: A phased mixed methods research approach was used. Phase I involved a series of focus groups interviews. Collected narrative data underwent qualitative thematic analysis to identify key themes believed to influence decision making capacity. These themes served to inform the development of a qualitative dental hygiene decision making model. Results: Qualitative analysis of focus group data yielded over 75 codes, and six themes emerged as being influential in dental hygiene decision making capacity. Of these themes, five reflected organizational constructs whereas one was shown to be individualistic. An additional organizational theme arose from the literature. A qualitative dental hygiene decision making model was developed using these interrelated key themes along with environmental features. Conclusions: While most of the key themes influencing dental hygiene decision making capacity were found to be organizational, one was individualistic and more aligned with previous research. It was concluded that both the organizational structure and one's individual agency influenced dental hygiene decision making capacity.
RESUME
Contexte et objet : Les hygiénistes dentaires se sont donné pour objectif d'élargir leur pratique afin d'améliorer l'accès de la population aux soins buccodentaires, notamment en modifiant l'étendue de leurs modes d'exercice et de prestation des soins de santé. Elles doivent démontrer leur capacité décisionnelle dans les cadres existants et de nouveaux cadres pour soutenir un tel élargissement. Cet article présente les données de la Phase I d'une étude à méthodologie mixte, dont le but était d'étudier la prise de décisions en hygiène dentaire, d'identifier les facteurs clés d'influence sur la prise de décisions et d'élaborer un modèle qualitatif de prise de décisions en hygiène dentaire, fondé sur les influences testées dans la Phase...