A study on parental acceptance towards the use of dental therapists in Malaysian private sectors

Introduction: The objective of this study was to assess parental acceptance and factors that influenced their perceptions towards the use of dental therapists in providing treatment to children in private dental practice settings. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on randomly selected parents of 11-year-old schoolchildren in Selangor using a self-administered structured questionnaire. The survey consisted of three sections: socio-demographic characteristics, dental service utilisation and parental acceptance towards dental therapists in providing seven types of preventive and operative dental procedures. Results: The response rate was 83.1%. Overall, most parents regarded dental therapists providing dental care to their children in private dental care settings as acceptable, particularly on preventive treatment, namely ‘seeking advice on oral hygiene care' (87.8%) and ‘applying topical fluoride' (83.2%). In the multivariate analysis, younger parents and those who had preferences over private sectors were most likely to accept at least four dental procedures to be rendered to their children by dental therapists. Overall, respondents who were younger (OR = 1.40, 95% CI = 1.62, 1.92), lived in urban locality (OR = 1.77, 95% CI = 1.28, 2.45) and had a recent dental visit (OR = 1.51; 95% CI = 1.10, 2.07) were more likely to have an overall positive perceptions towards dental therapists. Conclusion: Most parents regarded dental therapists providing care to their children in private dental settings as acceptable and this was associated with their age, place of residence and past dental experiences

RNA extractions of mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana L.) pericarps for sequencing

This study employed several RNA extraction methods for mangosteen pericarps prior to RNA sequencing. The sequencing platform heavily relies on a high quality RNA yield. However, pericarp tissues contain a lot of phenolic compounds that results in low RNA quality. Hence, we studied several RNA extraction methods to obtain the most suitable method for the best RNA quality from the pericarps of mangosteen. Five different methods including Lopez and Gomez, modified hexadecyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) method, several commercial kits from TranszolUP, Favorgen and Qiagen RNeasy were compared. By optimising the CTAB method, it was found to be the best method to obtain pure RNA (high A260/A280 ratio) with the highest yields (up to approximately 600-800 ng/μL concentration). The QC control of these samples using bioanalyzer validated their suitability for the downstream RNA sequencing. This report details the method for extracting high quality and high yield RNA samples from fruit that are rich in polyphenolic compounds such as mangosteen

Malaysian dental therapists' job motivation, job satisfaction, intention to leave and perceived future roles

Objective: To assess Malaysian dental therapists’ job satisfaction, motivation, turnover intention and perceived future roles, following recent changes in the regulations that allow them to provide dental care within their scope of practice in the private sector. Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to public dental therapists who were selected using a stratified random sampling technique. Questions included items on social structure, job satisfaction and motivation (based on the Warr-Cook-Wall scale), turnover intention (based on four cognitive processes) and perceived future roles. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the predictors of dental therapists’ turnover intention. Results: Overall, a majority (>90%) of the participants had high job satisfaction and job motivation, with total mean scores of 45.70 ± 6.86 and 21.16 ± 2.63, respectively. A total of 8.3% intended to leave the public sector to work in a different organization. Of those who chose to remain as a dental therapist in the next five years, only 7% considered working in the private sector. The significant predictors for turnover intention were educational attainment, years of working experience, job satisfaction level and future preferred working sector. Conclusion: Although the newly introduced Dental Act allows dental therapists to expand their roles to the private setting, very few intended to do so. This could be related to them having a high level of job satisfaction and job motivation while serving in the public sector

Parents’ acceptance towards the use of dental therapist in the private sector – a quantitative study

Objectives: To assess parents’ acceptability towards the use of dental therapists’ (DT) in providing treatment to children in private settings and to explore factors associated with their perception. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1260 randomly selected parents of 11 years old schoolchildren in Selangor. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used, which consisted of three sections: sociodemographic characteristics, dental service utilisation and acceptance towards DT in providing seven types of preventive and operative dental procedures. Data were analysed using SPSS version 22.0 software using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The p-value was set at 70%). Almost three-quarter (71.4%) of parents having high acceptance; accept more than or equal to five procedures. In multivariate analysis, parents who have high acceptance were those who were younger (OR=1.71, 95% CI= 1.26-2.32), lived in urban (OR=1.71, 95% CI= 1.23-2.36), Bumiputra in origin (OR=1.92, 95% CI= 1.08-3.43). However, mothers (OR=0.71, 95% CI= 0.52-0.95). and those who were unsure the presence of dental clinic nearby their home (OR=0.45, 95% CI= 0.24-0.87) were less likely having high acceptance. Conclusion: This study pointed out parent’s have high acceptance towards DT in providing treatments to their children in the private dental clinics and were associated with their sociodemographic status