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Oral Health Care Promotion to Ward Staff on the Care of the Elderly Ward

Copyright: © 2021  . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Introduction

Patients on the care of the elderly ward often present with complex medical histories resulting in increased risk of oral conditions. To improve patient care oral health training was delivered to ward staff on the Geriatric ward at the Royal London Hospital.

Aims

• Identify areas requiring improvement in relation to meeting the oral health needs of elderly inpatients.
• Improve staff knowledge of oral health conditions and maintaining oral health.

Methods

A patient survey was distributed to inpatients assessing oral hygiene regimes and patient satisfaction with oral health care. A site survey was performed to assess availability of oral health equipment based on Mouth Care Matters guidelines.Teaching was delivered to Care of the Elderly ward staff on the association between oral and general health, common oral conditions and their potential physical and mental impact. Detailed training on oral hygiene delivery was given.

Pre-and post-training surveys were distributed to attendees to ascertain baseline levels of knowledge and effectiveness of training.

Results

Table 1 summarises staff knowledge of common caries causing agents pre-and post-training.

• Knowledge of denture cleaning technique increased from 75% to 84%.
• Ability to identify common oral conditions increased from 38% to 50%.

Conclusion

Training feedback was positive; 100% of participants stated they will change their practice as a result. Further training on identifying common oral conditions has been arranged for ward staff.

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