2020 Volume 70 Issue 4 Pages 196-203
The present study investigated the practice of oral assessment and associated factors among visiting nurses to promote their oral assessment practice and interprofessional collaboration between nurses and oral health professionals through dental referral and consultation.
The subjects were visiting nurses who worked at home-visit nursing stations. A copy of a questionnaire was sent to 1,000 randomly selected home-visit nursing stations with instructions to be filled out by a visiting nurse.
A total of 206 (15 male nurses, 191 female nurses, mean age: 47.3±8.5 years old) participated in the questionnaire survey, and the response rate was 20.6%. More than 80% of the subjects performed oral assessment for home care patients who were elderly, had severe disability, had cardiovascular disease, had a feeding tube, or had a ventilator. However, these rates were low for adults (20-64 years old) and psychiatric patients. The rates of subjects reporting knowledge and use of oral assessment tools were 20.4 and 5.8%, respectively. More than half of subjects had problems with patients rejecting oral assessment, a lack of knowledge regarding oral assessments, and a lack of access to oral assessment tools. A higher rate of performing oral assessment was significantly correlated with more knowledge of oral assessment tools, more frequent usage of those tools, and a higher frequency of dental consultation (Correlation coefficient: r=0.153-0.361).
These findings suggest that support from oral health professionals is needed in order to foster oral assessment education, including the appropriate use of oral assessment tools, and to establish an environment supporting dental referrals and consultations, thereby promoting the practice of oral assessments and collaborations between visiting nurses and oral health professionals.
