ABSTRACT
Vurnerable older people often need intensive preventive and curative oral health care. However, their physical and cognitive decline does not always allow for lege artis implementation of dental treatments. This causes practical problems often with related moral issues. Including these moral issues in planning and implementation will make oral healthcare more effective and will also alleviate moral pressure on oral healthcare providers. Mostly the moral issues relate to every day ethics, which can be solved by all persons involved collectively, in open consultation and with an ethics of care approach. This means aiming at 'doing the right thing in the right way', including all the relevant aspects of the person of the patient and his/her environment. To achieve this, oral health care should be embedded in the overall care process for the elderly and care providers should feel involved with the older person and have reflective skills.
Subject(s)
Decision Making , Frail Elderly , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Dental Care , Female , Humans , Male , Morals , Oral HealthABSTRACT
In the thesis 'Barriers to effective periodontal care, published in 1984, an investigation was described on professional periodontal care lagging behind the development of periodontology. The objectives of the investigation were to assess whether dentists were treating periodontal disease as a behavioural problem using effective communication techniques, and whether serious periodontal disease had such low frequency that dentists had not the opportunity to become experienced in recognizing the disease. It was concluded that serious periodontal disease had a low frequency and was not influenced by communication on periodontal care. After 25 years, these conclusions are still valid: the percentage of risk patients is still 5-10% and the correlation between seriousness of periodontal disease and periodontal care provided is still limited. Not all dentists do have affinity to periodontal care, but they do have affinity to practical aspects, such as removing dental calculus deposits. A classification of obvious recognizable diseases and treatments would make periodontal care more manageable for dentists.
Subject(s)
Periodontal Diseases/prevention & control , Periodontics/standards , Age Factors , Dental Calculus/etiology , Dental Calculus/prevention & control , Dental Prophylaxis , Dentist-Patient Relations , Humans , Oral Health , Oral Hygiene , Practice Patterns, Dentists'ABSTRACT
Professionalism is considered as a core competency for dentists. As a result of changes in the healthcare sector, it is becoming increasingly important for dentists to be more transparent to the community in their delivery of care. The ability'to provide justification' thus becomes an important skill. To train dentists to become professionals who can account for their actions, we developed an educational programme in Groningen which trains students in the following professional skills: 1. make explicit; 2. concretize; 3. analyze; 4. diagnose; 5. generalize; and 6. formulate learning points and experiment with them. This educational programme is given, under the supervision of a coach (generally a practicing dentist), during the entire curriculum, in small groups. Professionalism is integrated with other course programmes (work placement, working in the clinic), because professionalism is a competency which is only expressed by practicing other competencies. The professionalism of the student is also assessed.
Subject(s)
Education, Dental , General Practice, Dental/standards , Practice Management, Dental/standards , Professional Competence/standards , Students, Dental/psychology , Evidence-Based Dentistry , Humans , Mentors , Netherlands , Professional RoleABSTRACT
In recent years, a specialization in geriatric dentistry has been established and along with it an educational programme. A specialist in geriatric dentistry is a dentist general practitioner with special knowledge and skills for delivering oral care to frail elderly people. The educational programme aims at an increase in dentists serving in geriatric care who are well prepared for delivering care. In the programme attention is paid to the special aspects of care delivery and the special somatic, mental, and social characteristics of frail elderly people. The goal is to formulate an individual oral care programme for every frail elderly person. An individual oral care programme may contain 5 different oral care activities: continuing care, prevention, support, treatments, and evaluation. These activities define the scope of specialists in geriatric dentistry. This scope in turn defines the profile of required knowledge and skills, and the profile is the foundation of the educational objectives of the educational programme. The educational programme contains 7 modules: affinity; somatic and mental disabilities; communicative skills and coping with behavioural disturbances; emergency medical care; history taking, assessment, prevention, treatments and evaluation; organization and legislation; scientific training.
