What preventive care do sedated children with caries referred to specialist services need?

Experiences of newly qualified dentists in delivering oral health advice to parents/caregivers of young children-challenges and solutions

Introduction

A key skill for dental professionals to master is their ability to have effective preventive oral health conversations. On qualifying, UK dentists undertake a one-year foundation training programme in general practice. This study explored with Foundation Dentists, the barriers and facilitators to undertaking oral health conversations with parents/caregivers and their children, aged 0-11 years old.

Materials and methods

Approximately 100 Foundation Dentists from the Yorkshire and Humber region attended a series of focus groups. They discussed how they and their wider dental team undertake oral health conversations with parents/caregivers of young children, aged 0-11 years old. The data was analysed using thematic analysis.

Results

Five themes were identified as barriers and facilitators to providing oral health advice: (1) Lack of knowledge around parenting skills and child development; (2) Parental receptivity; (3) Motivation for changing behaviours; (4) Information content and inconsistency; and (5) Current National Health Service (NHS) structures of general dental practice.

Discussion

A multi-faceted approach is needed to develop the training of Foundation Dentists to undertake preventive oral health conversations with parents/caregivers and children. Such an approach has the potential to improve the patient-practitioner relationship and increase effective behaviour change conversations taking place in general dental care, thus improving children's oral health.

"Strong Teeth"-a study protocol for an early-phase feasibility trial of a complex oral health intervention delivered by dental teams to parents of young children

Background

Dental attendance provides an important opportunity for dental teams to explore with parents the oral health behaviours they undertake for their young children (0–5 years old). For these discussions to be effective, dental professionals need to be skilled in behaviour change conversations. The current evidence suggests that dental teams need further support, training and resources in this area. Therefore, the University of Leeds and Oral-B (Procter & Gamble Company) have worked with the local community and dental professionals to co-develop “Strong Teeth” (an oral health intervention), which is delivered in a general dental practice setting by the whole dental team. The protocol for this early phase study will explore the feasibility and acceptability of the Strong Teeth intervention to parents and the dental team, as well as explore short-term changes in oral health behaviour.

Methods

Forty parents (20 of children aged 0–2 years old, and 20 of children aged 3–5 years old) who are about to attend the dentist for their child’s regular dental check-up will be recruited to the study. Parents and children will be recruited from 4 to 8 different dental practices. In the home setting, consent and baseline oral health behaviour data will be collected. The researchers will ask parents questions about their child’s oral health behaviours, including toothbrushing and diet. Three different proxy objective measures of toothbrushing will be collected and compared with self-report measures of parental supervised toothbrushing (PSB).

Discussion

The parent and child will then attend their dental visit and receive the Strong Teeth intervention, delivered by the dental team. This intervention should take 5–15 min to be delivered, in addition to the routine dental check-up. Furthermore, children aged 0–2 years old will receive an Oral-B manual children’s toothbrush, and children aged 3–5 years old will receive an Oral-B electric rechargeable children’s toothbrush. At 2 weeks and 2–3 months following the Strong Teeth intervention, further self-report and objective measures will be collected in the parent/child’s home. This data will be supplemented with purposively sampled qualitative interviews with parents (approximately 3 months following the intervention) and dental team members (following delivery of the intervention).

Trial registration

ISRCTN Register, (ISRCTN10709150)

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s40814-019-0483-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.