Oral health perceptions and client satisfaction among homeless adults attending a community‐centred dental clinic

Abstract

Background: The homeless face significant barriers accessing dental care. Community-centred dental clinics might provide more accessible care to this group. This descriptive epidemiological study aimed to measure oral health perceptions and client satisfaction among homeless and similarly disadvantaged adults receiving community-centred dental care. Methods: A sample of 79 clients attending St Patrick's Oral Health Clinic completed Locker's Global Oral Health Item, the Oral Health Impact Profile 14 and the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire 4. Results: High levels of satisfaction with St Patrick's Oral Health Clinic were based on positive staff attitudes, low cost, time effectiveness and staff sensitivity to anxiety. Ideas for improvement included shorter treatment waiting lists, offering additional treatment types and better communication and advertisement of the service. Compared to the general Australian population, participants reported a relatively poor self-perception of oral health and a high prevalence and severity of oral health impacts. Conclusions: Participants experienced significant personal and social impacts due to their oral conditions. High levels of client satisfaction reflect the value of community-centred dental care for this group. An understanding of factors influencing satisfaction might be useful for similar services providing oral care to homeless and similarly disadvantaged groups.

Identifying Challenges and Solutions to Providing Diabetes Care for Those Experiencing Homelessness

“…Many programs and organizations undertake diabetes care provision for patients who are experiencing homelessness; however, they described facing a number of barriers to providing this care. While some authors have described the challenges of individual programs for providing care to those experiencing homelessness (Doran & Doede, 2020;Hawkesford et al, 2020;Seto et al, 2020), our study is the first to focus on summarizing, in-depth, the experience of a wide variety of programs in different settings and municipalities. This study makes a novel contribution to the field as providing high-quality care for diabetes (and other chronic diseases) is widely regarded to be challenging, yet common challenges from a program perspective had not yet been summarized in a particularly comprehensive fashion.…”

“…An analysis of care for patients with rheumatological disease who experience homelessness in Los Angeles revealed significant barriers to accessing social services, medication management programs, and outreach services (Seto et al, 2020). A program that provides dental care to individuals experiencing homelessness in Australia noted that location of care was one of the largest barriers to providing care (Hawkesford et al, 2020). A study evaluating a student-led outreach program noted that a barrier to continuing the successful program was the availability of staff to do outreach (Doran & Doede, 2020).…”

“…Multidisciplinary teams which target all aspects of physical health, in addition to social services, were also effective; adding a pharmacist to primary care teams increased opportunities to provide patient education, medication management, improved patient follow-up with their healthcare provider, and medication compliance (Albertson et al, 2020;Johnsen et al, 2021;Lowrie et al, 2021). Incorporating dental care into an existing community health centre serving individuals experiencing homelessness led to improvement in the self-perception of oral health (Hawkesford et al, 2020). Outreach services have also been found to promote health literacy, increase connection with the healthcare system, and improve overall satisfaction with the healthcare system (Doran & Doede, 2020;Hirst & Cuthill, 2021), consistent with the suggestions of our participants.…”