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Section 2: Dental Partnership Activities
Patient Education Innovations
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- Patient education focuses on preventive care, smoking
cessation, and staying on medication regimens.
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Innovations in Patient Education
The most common techniques used to impart dental education to patients include
one-on-one discussions during dental appointments covering such like preventive
care (e.g. maintaining good oral hygiene and having regular appointments for
exam and cleaning) and the importance of adherence to HIV care plans including
staying on medication schedules.
- Smoking Cessation Education. Smoking cessation education
is also fairly common among funded Partnerships. Typically, patients are
referred to tobacco cessation programs in operation in the community. One
example is found in Louisiana, where patients are asked about tobacco use and
are asked if they wish to contact the State’s Tobacco Cessation Initiative,
where individual and group sessions and medications are provided.
- Literature. Printed items used to educate clients are
ubiquitous and cover topics like home care instructions for periodontal
conditions, dentures and partial dentures, brushing and flossing, treatment
descriptions for procedures, and disease-related materials for AIDS and
diabetes.
- Software. Other methods used include use of the CAESY
patient education software by two projects, Boston University and Lutheran
Medical Center. CAESY comprises computer based educational models. A director at
Lutheran reports that the “bilingual and interactive nature of CAESY system is
ideally suited for the patients since it allows users of all literacy levels to
participate in the computer educational modules in either English or Spanish.”
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