Often at times of illness our mouths are affected and this, in turn can effect our wellbeing. What incidents of poor oral health and good oral health have you experienced, and what impact has it had on the patients overall health ? Mouthcare is a fundemental nursing task but is it being done or is it a forgotten aspect of care? What can we, as nurses, do to ensure our patients have good oral hygiene? What about access to dental treatment for our patients, is it easy to get dental treatment for hospitalised patients, residents of care homes and our community patients ?
Click the picture to downlaod a printable PDF for notice boards
As always there are some links to some background reading below, but please feel free to suggest your own links
How to provide effective oral care - Nursing Times
Current standards of effective oral care provision are unacceptable -Nursing Times
Developing and implementing an oral carepolicy and assessment tool - Nursing Standard
The importance of mouthcare inpreventing infection - Nursing Standard
Summary by Teresa Chinn RN
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Post Chat Summary
View the Nursing Times blog for this post
This chat was very much a follow on from our “Basic Care” chat focussing on this one aspect of fundamental care – oral hygiene. The chat kicked off by asking what everyones first thoughts were about oral care. Participants saw oral care as being an essential and impactful nursing skill. A colleague from the Netherlands
It was generally agreed that the simple act of teeth brushing improved patient wellbeing. Participants’ reported improvements in speech & enjoyment of food in patients with whom they had helped with oral care.
Complications of poor oral hygiene were touched upon – especially in regard to respiratory and cardiac disease. With some interesting links shared
Difficulties in sourcing dental care was discussed and it was mentioned that often dentists cant attend for weeks and in some cases this delays hospital treatment especially in cardiac surgery.
Dentures were discussed –the importance of good fitting dentures and not loosing dentures was seen as important.
NurChat asked if participants found oral assessments useful – answers ranged from yes they are useful solong as they are part of ongoing care others felt that oral care was basic common sense. This then led to further debate that although it was common sense it still needed to be taught. Quality of oral health learning was then discussed and some had great experiences involving practical experience, some had on the ward training and some had no formal training in oral care.
The chat ended by discussing the correlation between poor nutrition and oral health and this raised some interesting points – NurChatters wondered if there would be any similarities in those patients with poor oral health and those identified as needing a “Red Tray” at mealtimes and agreed that it would be a valuable piece of research.
Summary by Teresa Chinn RN
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Chat Transcript (Via Storify)
