Abstract
Since it was verified that oral health care was effective for the prevention of aspiration pneumonia of the elderly needing care in nursing homes, the importance of oral health care has been recognized by nurses in hospitals. However, it is said that there are several limitations such as the number of times and methods of carrying out oral health care daily as a part of nursing care. The purpose of this study was to make clear the problems with oral health care by nurses themselves in hospitals and cooperation with dental professionals. The subjects were 644 nurses working in the wards in four hospitals with oral surgery departments in Niigata Prefecture. The answers to a questionnaire on the consciousness of, the implementation and the problems of oral health care in nursing care were analyzed an correlated with the wards and the years of clinical experience. Most nurses recognized the importance of oral health care. Many nurses thought that it was necessary to do oral health care now. The ideal number of times of daily oral health care was the same as the actual one in acute-care wards, but not in chronic-care wards. The sponge brush was commonly used in both acute- and chronic-care wards, but interproximal cleaning tools were used very little. The nurses with longer clinical experience tended to haveahigher awareness of the importance of oral health care. There was a difference in educational background of learning oral health care according to the years of clinical experience after graduation from nurseing school. Many nurses wanted to know how to provide oral health care for patients with severe intraoral or general conditions. However, it is actually difficult for them to acquire oral health care skill for such cases from only continuing education and/or school education. From these results, it was concluded that further study was necessary to find the effective means to cooperate closely with nurses and dental professionals while respecting each specialty.
