Current Evidence in the Practice of Dental Hygiene
Partido, B.B.
As the best available evidence becomes available, practicing dental hygienists must adapt to the advancements in technology, research methodology, and statistical analysis. However, practicing dental hygienists may rely on outdated or lack of evidence. Dental hygienists can use evidence-based practice to guide their clinical practice and implement changes in their delivery of dental hygiene care.
Challenges to implementing EBD 
Limited skills in the practice of EBD: Many practitioners do not accurately assess their knowledge and the ones with greatest knowledge gaps have the least amount of self-assessment of EBD skills.
Cognitive dissonance: When one is presented with evidence that challenges a belief or opinion, the feeling of discomfort is called cognitive dissonance. The more opposing the information, the more the intensity of internal conflict.
Confirmation bias: Even with the evidence, practitioners may continue to seek cues that confirm their own beliefs, which is called confirmation bias.
Implementing EBD into Dental Hygiene Practice 
- Create an EBD learning environment: Identify the EDB leader and team to support all EBD learning activities. The group will be responsible for creating learning obectives.
- Apply EBD into clinical practice: Applying the best available evidence can help common questions (i.e. What is the best sensitive toothpaste to use?) to very complex patients (i.e. What is the best course of treatment for a patient with Sjogren’s Syndrome?). The results of the searches for best available evidence and the application of the best available evidence may be collected to create standard operating procedures (SOP’s) for the dental office.
- Share findings with others: The evidence-based findings can be shared with colleagues by providing printed versions, electronic versions, oral presentations at meetings, and/or office websites/blogs.
- Review the best available evidence periodically: An adequate re-evaluation time of evidence is 2-5 years.