Five San Mateo Long-Term Care Facilities Benefit from Senior Oral Health Pilot Project

The CDA Foundation has recently embarked on a senior oral health pilot project that addresses unmet oral health needs for elderly residents in long-term care facilities.

The Senior Oral Health Training project hopes to improve the quality of oral health care at long-term care facilities by conducting training sessions for registered dental hygienists in alternative practice on a new, state-of-the-art curriculum, Overcoming Obstacles to Oral Health: A Training Program for Caregivers, provided by the University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. The fifth edition of this nationally-recognized curriculum is updated in accordance with the most recent science, policy, and practice standards and includes a number of new topics that are especially relevant to the geriatric population. In turn, these dental hygienist trainers will work with nursing staff from the long- term care facilities to provide oral hygiene training and advise facility personnel on how to translate the resulting knowledge gains into daily practice.  This train-the-trainer project will serve as a model for effectively increasing the oral health competence of nursing staff at long-term care facilities.

University of the Pacific’s Dr. Paul Glassman conducted the training for the hygienists on April 3. Training for the facility nursing staff will begin in June. The pilot project is being conducted in five San Mateo County long-term care facilities and will last approximately one year. The goal is to educate the facility nursing staff on how to provide quality oral health care to its residents. By instructing nursing staff how to properly care for residents’ oral health needs, future problems can be prevented, thereby improving the quality of life and overall health of residents.