Nursing Education and Improvement in Oral Care Delivery in Long-Term Care

Knowledge of oral health of nursing staff caring for disadvantaged older people

“…[10] "Oral hygiene" is not specifically outlined and facilities lack policies to guide nursing staff. [16] This results in substandard oral health of older people as reported by Coleman and Watson [8] in a study that found very little time was spent on oral health care including brushing teeth and tongue, flossing, evaluating the oral cavity as well as not wearing clean gloves while providing oral care.…”

“…[21] However, not all oral health education programs are successful in changing nursing staff's perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors of oral health care provided to patients. Gammack and Pulisetty [16] examined the effectiveness of an oral health education program but unfortunately the 30-minute multimedia education program found no statistical significance in the nurses' quality of oral health care before and after the intervention. More disappointingly, the average length of time spent providing oral health care by brushing teeth, gums, and dentures of the residents actually decreased from 58 to 52 seconds.…”

“…More disappointingly, the average length of time spent providing oral health care by brushing teeth, gums, and dentures of the residents actually decreased from 58 to 52 seconds. [16] 1.2 Summary The literature demonstrates a pattern of results and recommendations addressing the need to describe and evaluate an oral health education program for nursing staff. Findings of published studies show that more efficacious programs that are repeated throughout a longer specified time period are needed in order to help change oral health behaviors.…”

Oral Health in a Cognitive and Behavioral Unit

“…Because of the cognitive dysfunction and the behavioral abnormalities of the patients, the nurses have difficulties to perform appropriate oral hygiene. Also, there is a lack of knowledge on the subject of oral care by the nursing staff, especially for the patients with Alzheimer's disease [19,[22][23][24][25][26].…”

“…Although they can affect the quality of life of elderly with dementia, the oral health is often neglected and the oral care is considered complicated. Indeed, the behavior disorders (agitation, aggression), the lack of cooperation even the opposition, the loss of autonomy, the disturbance of the physical marks are so many brakes in the access to healthcare dental [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”