Barriers to adopting and implementing an oral health programme for managing early childhood caries through primary health care providers in Lima, Peru

Abstract

BackgroundTo identify barriers to participation in a primary oral health care programme aimed at preventing early childhood caries, as perceived by nurses.MethodsOf a total of 140 randomly selected nurses employed in 40 government health centres in Lima, 123 completed a pre-tested questionnaire. Background variables were districts’ ‘socio-economic status’ (SES) and ‘years of experience’. Factor analysis was performed. ANOVA was applied for testing the influence of the background variables on the barrier factors. Chi-square test was applied to test for differences between single item barriers and the background variables. The Likert-scale (1–4) was used.ResultsThere was no statistical significant effect of ‘SES’ or of ‘years of experience’ of nurses on any of the 7 barrier factors, nor on the 11 single item barrier factors. The highest mean score (3.81) was obtained for the barrier factor ‘importance of oral health’, followed by ‘perceived responsibility’ (3.44). The lowest mean score was (1.70) for ‘knowledge on caries prevention’.ConclusionsNurses consider oral health very important and are willing to participate actively in programmes aimed at reducing Early Childhood Caries, provided that they will be trained well and that the director and dentists of the health centre give their consent.

An evaluation of the knowledge of pediatric nurses about the oral health status of newborns and pediatric oral health care

“…[19] In the literature, contradictory results have been obtained from some studies in which education degree is found a significantly effective factor whereas years of professional experience did not significantly influence knowledge. [11] Perassi et al [16] also indicated no significant associations between knowledge vs. socio-economic status and years of professional experience in their study. When considering sociodemographic factors, we did not obtain any significant relations between age, marital status, parental status, type of high school, type of pediatric clinic in which the nurses work, the duration of working life in the same clinic and total mean correct scores.…”

“…Pesaressi et al [16] reported similar results including the poorer knowledge status, particularly in the knowledge of "experience in seeing carious lesions" and "the knowledge on caries prevention". In the literature, it has also been reported that the rudimentary knowledge level of nurses regarding children's oral health care is inevitable due to the fact that education on specific oral health issues has not been implemented in their continuous education period.…”

“…[11,12,16,17] In addition, the current evidence supports the idea of improving knowledge quality of these health professionals with different education strategies.…”

“…Therefore, this problem must be solved by implementing professional education strategies during their academic and professional job career planning as stated previously by other authors. [11,13,16,17,[20][21][22] Moreover, the authors of this study have also designed a new project and started a new education training program for nursing students and parents with children aged 0-3 years old using the source of OHRC in Georgetown University since the permissions were also obtained from the source. [19] In the literature, contradictory results have been obtained from some studies in which education degree is found a significantly effective factor whereas years of professional experience did not significantly influence knowledge.…”

“…[10,11] In order to enhance the chance of preventing oral healthrelated issues as well as raising awareness about normal and pathological dental conditions among children, primary health care nurses have been considered a cost-effective worker group in oral health screening and education procedures for regular dental visits. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] In general, basic education principles of nursing students and/or nurses do not contain specific oral health issues, which results in inadequate knowledge on the oral health care of newborns and children. [11,[13][14][15][16][17] Since pediatric nurses could have responsibilites for preventive dentistry and recognition of caries progression from the first eruption of primary teeth, as well as monitoring the development of oral and maxillo facial region in the pediatric population [4,8,[12][13][14][15][16][17] professional education strategies might be implemented into their basic education courses which could also be beneficial to manage the oral health profile of newborns and children.…”