A Survey on Utilization of Dental Services by Foreign Children in Seoul

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the utilization status of dental services by foreign children living in Seoul and their level of satisfaction with the treatments. We developed a structured questionnaire with 35 questions, which comprised 14 questions (demographic characteristics) and 21 questions (oral hygiene and dental experience of the child). In this study, the distribution of nationality of 391 participants differed from the actual statistics in Korea. It consisted of high percentage of participants from African countries (23.6%), as well as North American countries (24.1%). In addition, the education status of most parents was above the level of college graduate. Despite the relatively high socioeconomic status of the participants, they showed minimal dental health knowledge regarding the aspect of oral hygiene. Utilization of dental health services and the types of dental clinics visited by them were similar before and after coming to Korea. The participants showed overall satisfaction with the care, but many of them expressed the need for improvement with regard to treatment fee and communication. In conclusion, foreign children living in Seoul require appropriate dental health education and governmental support to promote regular dental checkups , to improve their overall oral health, and prevent the incidence of dental caries.

Barriers to the utilization of dental services among international students of Korean universities

“…With logistic regression analysis, our results confirm that participants who agreed to lack of knowledge and interest in oral health were less likely to use dental services. This agrees with the study done on foreign children in Korea, low utilization of dental services was associated with low dental knowledge and insufficient interest in oral health 20) . The present study shows that an increase in financial problems reduces the use of dental services, similar to the study Studies done on the use of dental institutions among Chinese students and foreigners in Korea.…”