The role of the dental and dental hygiene practitioner in geriatric oral health promotion can be viewed in terms of three questions. What purposeful or directed steps have been taken to improve oral health promotion? How can health promotion be improved? How can education and research help the practitioner? Professional associations, educators, researchers, school curricula, instructional programs, and dental products companies have tried to improve oral health promotion. At each level, communication of information and effective use of information has been compromised. Geriatric oral health promotion can be improved by increased understanding of: (1) health promotion concepts, (2) cultural and generational issues, (3) chronic oral conditions, (4) patients' perspective, (5) promoting behavior change, (6) listening skills, (7) patients' everyday realities, (8) integrating oral health issues into other health promotion activities, (9) creating easy to understand health education materials, and (10) lobbying for third party reimbursement for oral health promotion.
Questionnaires were distributed to adult patients in a representative national sample of nine dental schools to solicit information on patient demographics, use of services, and perception of the care received. Responses from 2,346 patients were analyzed and compared to findings from various local studies. Results indicate: age range of patients and type of dental needs available to students is extremely variable among schools, the major referral system is through friends and relatives, most patients pay for all of their care and seek care at dental schools because of reasonable costs, transportation and parking pose significant problems for some patients, the majority of respondents had been patients for two years or less, and many patients want all of their clinical and interpersonal dental needs met in the school setting. Dental schools seriously need to consider such factors in light of current and projected teaching patient shortages.
Dental hygiene programs were surveyed to determine current availability of patients to meet the training needs of dental hygiene students. Eighty‐six percent of the programs responded. Widespread inadequate to marginal patient availability was reported in periodontics and radiology. Two major reasons cited for patient shortages were, first, that completion of treatment requires too much time, and, second, that people are unaware of the scope of services performed by students. Patient shortages do not appear to be contributing to changes in the curriculum or fiscal problems in dental hygiene programs.
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