Perception and intention of dentists toward clinical volunteering for continuing education credits for license...

Certain state dental boards permit dentists to apply continuing education (CE) credits from clinical volunteerism toward license renewal. The authors assessed Ohio dentists' perceptions about, and intention toward, clinical volunteerism and their awareness of such CE credit benefits.

An internet-based self-administered questionnaire about demographic, professional, and practice characteristics; perception about clinical volunteerism; and awareness of CE credit benefits was emailed to 6,281 dentists. Ten Likert scale items measured respondents' behavioral, normative, and control belief agreement levels about clinical volunteerism. Data analyses included descriptives, Spearman rank correlation, median test, computation of odds ratio (95% CI), and logistic regression.

Survey response rate was 6.5%; 59.1% of respondents were male, 80.3% were White, and 56% had more than 25 years of clinical practice. Some respondents (27.8%) accepted public health insurance in their practices, and only 35.7% were aware of the CE credit benefits for clinical volunteerism. Among the respondents, 81.5% believed that volunteering oral health care services was important, 78.3% were willing to help underserved communities, and 68.5% had provided nearly 40 hours of pro bono oral health care in the previous 2 years. The following were the significant predictors of respondents' intention to volunteer, confirmed by the 95% CI for the adjusted odds ratios: younger age (95% CI, 1.22 to 3.74), race and ethnicity (95% CI, 1.19 to 5.85), provision of pro bono oral health care (95% CI, 1.89 to 5.57), and more than 25 years in practice (95% CI, 1.81 to 5.58).

The authors identified a need to publicize the CE credit benefits from clinical volunteerism toward license renewal.

Dentists' positive perceptions of clinical volunteerism and intention to volunteer could help improve oral health care access to underserved populations.