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The effect of nurses' background on performance of nursing home resident oral health assessments pre‐ and post‐training
Author(s) -
Blank Lawrence W.,
ArvidsonBufano Ulla Britt,
Yellowitz Janet A.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
special care in dentistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.328
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1754-4505
pISSN - 0275-1879
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-4505.1996.tb00836.x
Subject(s) - medicine , nursing , graduation (instrument) , nurse education , family medicine , mathematics , geometry
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of nurses' background on their accuracy in determining oral health status and treatment need of newly admitted nursing home residents before and after tutoring. Eighteen nurses examined SO nursing home residents before and after an in‐service training lecture. Examinations performed by a dentist served as reference. Background items evaluated were: regularity of each nurse's own dental visits; years since graduation from nursing school; length of experience in an LTC facility; and training received in oral health care. At the second evaluation, nurses greatly improved the % agreement on ail items. The results of this study indicate that, regardless of background characteristics, the combination of training, the presence of the dentist, and knowledge that they were in a study appeared to improve nurses' performance on the assessment. Before training, more experienced nurses were better able to determine hard tissue abnormalities than their less experienced counterparts; before training, neither group performed well in assessing soft tissue lesions. Therefore, improvements in basic nursing training in this area appear to be necessary.