Dr. Annetty Soto and Dean Jeffrey W. Hutter with the award-winning poster
At the 2015 American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Annual Session & Exhibition, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) first year Geriatric Dental Medicine Fellow in the Department of General Dentistry Dr. Annetty Soto won first place in the ADEA/DENTSPLY International Student Poster Awards, which recognize dental students for outstanding research and innovation. The award-winning poster Dr. Soto presented was titled “An Exploration of Clinicians’ Attitudes and Practices in Oral Health for Older Adults.” This year’s annual session was held from March 7–10 at the Hynes Convention Center and explored the theme “Igniting Minds Unlocking Potential.”
“The ADEA 2015 Annual Session is a great platform for dental education research,” said Dr. Soto. “The recognition that our project received confirms the need for further academic investigation in the growing field of oral health for older adults.”
Oral health has been identified as one of the top nine indicators of health needing improvement for older adults, according to Healthy People 2020, a government program which sets nationwide health promotion and disease prevention goals. This fact raises a serious question about primary health care professionals giving enough attention to the oral health of older adults during their physical exams. For this reason, Dr. Soto and her colleagues conducted a study with the goal of learning more about the clinicians’ knowledge and practice of oral health care in older adults.
Dr. Soto and her colleagues developed an oral health knowledge and oral health screening practice survey, which was then administered and completed by 27 physicians and nurses in the Section of Geriatrics at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. Seventy-seven percent of the section responded to the survey. Of the respondents, 96 percent agreed on the importance of performing oral health assessments on edentulous patients and 82 percent reported they would change a patient’s medication if it negatively impacted their oral health. Unfortunately, just 22 percent of these clinicians rated themselves as knowledgeable about oral health issues, and 26 percent were confident in their oral health assessment skills.
Dental professionals are faced with the challenge of keeping track of older adult patients who, due to cognitive or physical impairment, tend to discontinue regular dental office visits. The role of a Geriatric Primary Care team is to identify those patients who need regular oral health examinations. The study suggests that medical clinicians treating older adults should include an oral health assessment as part of routine care. Despite the many years of experience of the clinicians in the sample, the survey results suggest a gap in clinicians’ knowledge, confidence, and performance of oral health assessments and referrals.
While the results of this survey showed a few interesting trends, there has been a positive outcome. Dr. Soto and her colleagues will begin conducting in-house trainings for medical providers in the Section of Geriatrics to help establish better practice protocols for oral health care in the routine medical care of geriatric patients. This will help enable medical providers to reduce the barriers in accessing oral health care for older adults and the homebound.
“Dr. Soto’s survey and findings here in the Geriatric Section at Boston Medical Center of are eye-opening,” said Director of Geriatric Dental Medicine and Assistant Dean of Students Dr. Joseph Calabrese. He continued, “These findings and the resulting trainings will serve as an important step forward in geriatric oral health care.”