• 9 years ago
• Posted in:01: Professionalism, 04: Clinical therapy
• 0
• Author: hsin-ying hsieh
• Tags: community practice, Mental illness

Poor oral health is common among mentally ill people and is often related to inadequate nutrition, poor self-care, substance abuse, and medication side effects.¹ Poor oral hygiene is a significant problem because it results in dental pathology that has an adverse influence on the whole body.^1-4 Providing dental hygiene therapy for this population is essential to alleviate their poor oral health conditions.⁵

This experience demonstrated my growth and development in clinical skills.

I was placed to pioneer house association for the first semester of my fourth year rotation. Our team was there to provide dental hygiene care, which also included clinical therapy for their residents. The residents are people living with mental conditions. Through this experience, I learned to provide cultural competent care and communicate respectfully with the residents. I often needed to provide dental hygiene therapy in a house setting where working chair is the sofa in the residents’ home. There are limited space and time for us to work with our clients. People living with mental conditions often have anxieties that cause them get agitated easily. We often needed to provide care effectively and efficiently due to their mental state. Therefore, I learned the importance of possessing exceptional debriding skills, while providing cultural competent care. Additionally, these clients tend to be forgetful and may not understand or remember the medications they are taking or the dental treatments they had undergone a month ago. Therefore, it was also important for us to collaborate with the nursing staff to obtain medication lists, for example.

This community experience has helped improve my clinical skills and prepared me to provide care professionally for different groups of individuals, including those suffering from mental illnesses. I am confident in my ability to manage and care for those suffering from mental illnesses in my future practice because of my development through this experience.

References: 

1. McCreadie RG, Stevens H, Henderson J, Hall D, McCaul R, Filik R, et al. The dental health of people with schizophrenia. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2004 Oct; 110(4):306-10.
2. Arnaiz A, Zumarraga M, Diez-Altuna I, Uriarte JJ, Moro J, Perez-Ansorena MA. Oral health and symptoms of schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 2011 Jun; 188(1):24-8.
3. Tani H, Uchida H, Suzuki T, Shibuya Y, Shimanuki H, Watanabe K, et al. Dental conditions in inpatients with schizophrenia: a large-scale multi-site survey. BMC Oral Health. 2014 Aug; 12:32-8.
4. Zusman SP, Ponizovsky AM, Dekel D, Masarwa AE, Ramon T, Natapov L, et al. An assessment of the dental health of chronic institutionalized patients with psychiatric disease in Israel. Spec Care Dentist. 2010 Jan-Feb; 30(1):18-22.
5. Darby ML, Walsh MM. Dental hygiene: theory and practice. 3rd ed. St. Louis, Mo: Saunders/Elsevier; 2010.