A Comprehensive Review Of Integrating Oral Health Into Nursing Protocols: Bridging Dentistry And General Patient Care
Published 2024-03-15
Keywords
- Oral health integration, nursing protocols, interprofessional education, oral care barriers, ventilator-associated pneumonia, health literacy, multidisciplinary care, systemic health links
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Incorporating oral health into nursing practices is a crucial approach in bridging dentistry with the rest of the patients in terms of the two-way relationships between oral diseases and systemic diseases such as pneumonia, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. This is a systematic review that summarizes findings on the effectiveness, advantages, challenges, and implementation of oral health integration at nursing in the past 2020-2024. Based on the 35 studies, the primary results show enhanced nurse knowledge (20-33% after the training) and attitudes, as well as practices, and the decrease in ventilator-associated pneumonia (as high as 62) with standardized protocols. Nevertheless, obstacles like poor training (reported by 50-78% of nurses), lack of time, and resource are still present. Changes in policies and interprofessional education (IPE) are enlisted as facilitators. Illustrations are made to depict adoption patterns and improvement of outcomes. The debate is critical of curriculum weaknesses, and suggestions support the compulsory IPE, standardized instruments, and systemic changes. This integration also promotes holism, which is a key objective of the public health of fewer disparities.