Oral health care‐related beliefs among Finnish geriatric home care nurses

Abstract

The nursing staff mostly believed that oral diseases are preventable and teeth can be retained in advanced age, but failed to recognize the value of dental knowledge and had little confidence in their ability to manage oral diseases. Improving the oral health-related knowledge and self-efficacy beliefs of nursing staff will require additional oral health education.

Perceptions of older people’s oral health care among nurses working in geriatric home care

“…The nurses have some knowledge about oral health-related problems among older people, but they are uncertain of their own skills when performing oral health practices for older people. The results of this study are in line with our previous study, which showed that nurses have limited oral health care knowledge about how to prevent dental diseases [9].…”

“…When oral hygiene is registered into the daily treatment plan, the nurses make time for it. Many dental problems could be prevented by careful oral home care, but most of the nurses are uncertain about oral health practices and their self-efficacy is poor, which is same result we found in our previous study [9]. In addition, dental hygienists have been found to be willing to offer treatment, but their self-perceived competency was insufficient to carry out such measures [17].…”

“…The interviews were based on the themes deduced from previous studies. Our previous study [9] showed that nurses working in geriatric home care had limited knowledge about oral health care of older people and expressed lack of confidence in their ability to manage oral diseases. This qualitative study aimed to deepen the understanding of the nurses' knowledge, skills and attitudes to oral health care of older people.…”

“…In our previous report, we analysed various oral health-related beliefs and self-efficacy among nurses working in geriatric home care using a questionnaire [9]. We found that nurses mainly thought that oral diseases can be prevented and teeth can be retained during aging, but they had limited confidence in managing oral diseases.…”

Oral health assessment in domiciliary care service planning of older people

“…Therefore, the consideration of OHRIs during the evaluation of service contents might depend mostly on the CMs knowledge of the matter or ability to use available guidelines. The general level of knowledge regarding oral health, ability to assess OHRIs during service planning and attitudes toward OHRIs might also have an effect on OHRIs during the evaluation of services.…”