Developing a clinical governance assessment framework for dental Schools

Promoting national oral health equity should be the primary objective of dental schools. Dental graduates also have the prime role to play in such achievements. On the other hand, dental clinical governance (DCG) is there to ensure providing best quality in all dental care services for patients or healthy individuals. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a DCG assessment framework for use in local dental schools in Iran. The present study was conducted by using mixed (qualitative and quantitative) method. The study was performed in 3 steps, including: 1) Comprehensive review of literature for domain generation 2) Validating the questionnaire 3) Applying validated questionnaire in selected dental schools for evaluating domains of clinical governance. The content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) were calculated for each question. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated to evaluate the internal consistency also, Intra class coefficient (ICC) was calculated for evaluating reliability of the questionnaire. Smart PLS software was used for computing confirmatory factorial analysis to determine construct validity of questionnaire. The results of the evaluation showed that in management and leadership domain 60%, in clinical effectiveness and audit (prevention) domain 36%, in clinical effectiveness and audit (treatment) domain 75%, in patient and public involvement domain 22% in risk management domain 56%, in information management only4% and in staff management domain 63% of responses were in good range. (Upper than 70% positive answers to questions was considered as good). The newly developed DCG framework can be used for assessment of compliance level among Iranian dental schools at the national level.Results of this evaluation showed that more efforts is necessary for further improvement in all domains of clinical governance in dental schools.