Essay: The Importance Of Providing Oral Care

The Importance of Providing Oral Care Brushing your teeth, how do you feel when you brush your teeth? When you wake up in the morning what is your routine, get up use the restroom, brush your teeth, and then go on about getting ready for the day? How would you feel if you couldn’t brush your teeth whither it be because you don’t have access to a toothbrush or toothpaste, or what if you couldn’t even remember to brush your teeth in the morning or evenings? When you don’t brush your teeth you feel like your routine is incomplete or what about the smell or taste you may have in your mouth. Or what happens over time when you don’t brush your teeth or go get your teeth cleaned twice a year, a buildup of plaque occurs and possibly gum inflammation.

During this survey a framework was designed called RE-AIM which stands for Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance, the program was designed to teach healthcare providers the proper way to manage, maintain, and improve oral hygiene care in long term care, veterans. The program implemented that the long-term care, veterans would receive oral care two times a day daily. Once this program was implemented it was found that not only were staff not properly trained in providing good oral hygiene they did not have access to the proper materials to provide oral care. DOHP composed key components that were to be mandated. 1) Clear expectations for direct care staff regarding oral care. 2) Mandatory, multimodal, interactive training of all nursing staff members in both dementia interaction sills and oral care. 3) Personalized oral care plans and 4) staff support for addressing challenges to providing oral hygiene care (McConnell et al.,